The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter (novels to read for beginners txt) 📖

meditate on the words which Edwin had carelessly spoken—that "she made herself a nun for Wallace!" "And so I will," said she to herself; "and that resolution stills every wild emotion. All is innocence in heaven, Wallace! You will there read my soul, and love me as a sister."

In such a frame of mind did she listen to the relation of Edwin; did her animated eye welcome the entrance of Badenoch and Loch-awe, and their enthusiastic encomiums on the lord of her heart. Then sounded the trumpet; and the herald's voice in the streets proclaimed the victory of the regent. Lady mar rushed to the window, as if there she would see himself. Lady Ruthven followed, and as the acclamations of the people echoed through the air, Helen pressed the precious cross of Wallace to her bosom and hastily left the room to enjoy the rapture of her thoughts in the blessed retirement of her own oratory.

In the course of a few days, after the promulgation of all this happy intelligence, it was announced that the regent was on his return to Stirling. Lady Mar was not so inebriated with her vain hopes as to forget that Helen might traverse the dearest of them, should she again present herself to its object. She therefore hastened to her when the time of his expected arrival drew near; and putting on all the matron, affected to give her the counsel of a mother.

As all the noble families around Stirling would assemble to hail the victor's return, the countess said, she came to advise her, in consideration of what had passed in the chapel before the regent's departure, not to submit herself to the observation of so many eyes. Not suspecting the occult devices which worked in her stepmother's heart, Helen meekly acquiesced, with the reply, "I shall obey." But she inwardly thought, "I, who know the heroism of his soul, need not pageants nor acclamations of the multitude to tell me what he is. He is already too bring for my senses to support, and with his image pressing on my heart, it is mercy to let me shrink from his glorious presence."

The "obey" was sufficient for Lady Mar; she had gained her point. For though she did not seriously think (what she had affected to believe) that anything more had passed between Wallace and Helen than what they had openly declared, yet she could not but discern the harmony of their minds, and she feared that frequent intercourse might draw such sympathy to something dearer. She had understanding to perceive his virtues, but they found no answering qualities in her breast. The matchless beauty of his person, the penetrating tenderness of his manner, the splendor of his fame, the magnitude of his power, all united to set her impassioned and ambitious soul in a blaze. Each opposing duty seemed only a vapor through which she could easily pass to the goal of her desire. Hence art of every kind appeared to her to be no more than a means of acquiring the object most valuable to her in life. Education had not given her any principle by which she might have checked the headlong impulse of her now aroused passions. Brought up as a worshiped object, in the little court of her parents, at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, her father the Earl of Strathern, in Scotland, and her mother being a princess of Norway, whose dowry brought him the sovereignty of those isles, their daughter never knew any law but her own will, from her doting mother. And on the fearful loss of that mother, in a marine excursion of pleasure, by an accident oversetting the boat she was in, the bereaved daughter fell into such a despair, on her first pang of grief of any kind, that her similarly distracted father (whose little dominions happened then to be menaced by a descent of the Danes) sought a safe and cheering home for his only child, at the interesting age of seventeen, by sending her over sea, to the protecting care of his long-affianced friend, the Earl of Mar, and to his lovely countess, then an only three years' wife with one infant daughter.

Though fond of admiration, the young Joanna of Orkney had held herself at too high a price, to bestow a thought on the crowd of rough sons of the surge (chiefs of the surrounding isles, who owned her father as lord), who daily adulated her charms with all the costliest trophies from their ocean-spoils. She trod past them, and by all the female beauties in her isle, with the step of an undisputed right to receive, and to despise. But when she crossed to the mainland, and found herself by the side of a woman almost as young as herself, and equally beautiful, though of a different mold, soft and retreating, while hers commanded and compelled; and that the husband of that woman, whose tender adoration hovered over her with a perpetual eye; that he, though of comparative veteran years, was handsomer than any man she had ever seen, and fraught with every noble grace to delight the female heart; she felt what she had never done before, that she had met a rival and an object worthy to subdue.

What Joanna began in mere excited vanity, jealous pride, and ambition of conquest, ended in a fatal attachment to the husband of her innocent and too confiding protectress. And he, alas! betrayed, first by her insidious wiles, and then by her overpowering and apparently restrainless demonstrations of devoted love, was so far won "from the propriety" of his noble heart, as to regard with a grateful admiration, as well as a manly pity, the beautiful victim of a passion he had so unwittingly raised. In the midst of these scenes, too often acted for his peace (though not for his honor and fidelity to his marriage vow), his beloved Isabella, the wife of his bosom, and till then the joy of his life, died in the pangs of a premature confinement, breathing her last sigh in the birth of a daughter. Scarcely was the countess consigned to her bed of earth, and even in the hour after the last duties were paid to her, whose closed tomb seemed to have left unto him "his house desolate!" when the heart-desperate Joanna rushed into the weeping husband's presence, fearful of being now restrainingly reclaimed by her father, who had, only a short while before, intimated his intention to relieve his friends of a guardianship they had so partially fulfilled, and to send a vessel for his daughter, to bring her back to Kirkwall, there to be united in marriage to the brave native chieftain, whose singular prowess had preserved the island from a Danish yoke. Dreading this event, even while her siren tears mingled with those of the widowed Mar, she wrought on him, by lavish protestations of a devoted love for his two infant orphans (Helen, then a child of hardly two years, and the poor babe whose existence had just cost its mother her life)—also of a never-dying dedication of herself to that mother's memory, and to the tenderest consolations of his own mourning spirit, she wrought upon him to rescue her from her now-threatened abhorrent fate, even to give her his vow—to wed her himself! In the weakness of an almost prostrated mind, under the load of conflicting anguish which then lay upon him—for now feeling his own culpable infirmity, in having suffered this dangerously flattering preference of him to have ever showed itself to him, without his having down his positive duty, by sending her home at once to her proper protector—in a sudden self-immolating agony of self-blame, he assented to her heart-wringing supplication, that as soon as propriety would permit, she should become his wife.

The Earl of Strathern arrived himself within the week, to condole with his friend, and to take back his daughter. But the scene he met, changed his ultimate purpose. Joanna declared, that were she to be carried away to marry any man save that friend, whose protection, during the last six months, had been to her as that of all relatives in one, she should expire on the threshold of Castle Braemer, for she never would cross it alive! And as the melancholy widower, but grateful lover, verified his vow to her, by repeating it to her father—within four months from that day, the Earl of Mar rejoined the Lady Joanna at Kirkwall, and brought her away as his bride. But to avoid exciting any invidious remarks, by immediately appearing in Scotland after such prompt nuptials, the new countess, wary in her triumph, easily persuaded her husband to take her for awhile to France; where, assuming a cold and majestic demeanor, which she thought becoming her royal descent, she resided several years. Thus changed, she returned to Scotland. She found the suspicion of any former indiscretion faded from all minds, and passing her time in the stately hospitalities of her lord's castles, conducted herself with a matronly dignity, that made him the envy of all the married chieftains in his neighborhood. Soon after her arrival at Kildrumy on the River Dee, her then most favorite residence, she took the Lady Helen, the supplanted Isabella's first-born daughter, from her grandfather at Thirlestance, where both children had been left on the departure of their father and his bride for France. Though hardly past the period of absolute childhood, the Lord Soulis at this time offered the young heiress of Mar his hand. The countess had then no interest in wishing the union; having not yet any children of her own, to make her jealous for their father's love, she permitted her daughter-in-law to decide as she pleased. A second time he presented himself, and Lady Mar, still indifferent, allowed Helen a second time to refuse him. Years flew over the heads of the ill-joined pair; but while they whitened the raven locks of the earl, and withered his manly brow, the beauty of his countess blew into fuller luxuriance.

Yet it was her mirror aloe that told her she was fairer than all the ladies around, for none durst invade the serene decorum of her manners, with so light a whisper. Such was her state, when she first heard of the rise of Sir William Wallace, and when she thought that her husband might not only lose his life, but risk the forfeiture of his family honors, by joining him, for her own sake and for her children's (having recently become the mother of twins), she had then determined, if it were necessary, to make the outlawed chief a sacrifice. To this end, she became willing to bribe Soulis' participation, by the hand of Helen. She knew that her daughter-in-law abhorred his character, but love, indifference, or hatred, she now thought of little consequence in a marriage which brought sufficient antidotes in rank and wealth. She had never felt what real love was, and her personal vanity being no longer agitated by the raptures of a frantic rivalry, she now lived tranquilly with Lord Mar. What then was her astonishment, what the wild distraction of her heart, when she first beheld Sir William Wallace, and found in her breast for him, all which, in the moment of the most unreflecting intoxication, she had ever felt for her lord, with the addition of feelings and sentiments, the existence of which she had never believed, but now knew in all their force! Love for the first time penetrated through every nerve of her body, and possessed her whole mind. Taught a theory of virtue by her husband, she was startled at wishes which militated against his honor, but no principles being grounded in her mind, they soon disappeared before the furious charge of his passions, and after a short struggle she surrendered herself to the lawless power of a guilty and ambitious love. Wishes, hopes, and designs, which two years before, she would have shuddered at, as not only sinful but derogatory to female delicacy, she now embraced with ardor, and naught seemed dreadful to her but disappointment. The prolonged life of Lord Mar cost her many tears, for the master-passions of her nature, which she had laid asleep on her marriage with the earl, broke out with redoubled violence at the sight of Wallace. His was the most perfect of manly forms—and she loved; he was great—and her ambition blazed into an unextinguishable flame. These two strong passions, meeting in a breast weakened by the besetting sin of her youth, their rule was absolute, and neither virtue, honor, nor humanity could stand before them. Her