Tower Hill.
Long and silently had she watched his rest. So gentle was his breath,
that he scarcely seemed to breathe; and often, during her sad vigils,
did she stoop her cheek to feel the respiration which might still bear
witness that his outraged spirit was yet fettered to earth. She
tremblingly placed her hand on his heart, and still its warm beats
spake comfort to hers. The soul of Wallace, as well as his beloved
body, was yet clasped in her arms. "The arms of a sister enfold thee,"
murmured she to herself; "they would gladly bear thee up, to lay thee
on the bosom of thy martyred wife; and there, how wouldst thou smile
upon and bless me! And shall we not meet so before the throne of Him
whose name is Truth?"
The first rays of the dawn shone upon his peaceful face just as the
door opened, and a priest appeared. He held in his hands the sacred
host, and the golden dove, for performing the rites of the dying. At
this sight, the harbinger of a fearful doom, the fortitude of Helen
forsook her; and throwing her arms frantically over the sleeping
Wallace, she exclaimed, "He is dead! his sacrament is now with the Lord
of Mercy!" Her voice awakened Wallace; he started from his position;
and Helen seeing, with a wild sort of disappointment that he, whose
gliding to death in his sleep she had even so lately deprecated, now,
indeed, lived to mount the scaffold, in unutterable horror, fell back
with a heavy groan.
Wallace accosted the priest with a reverential welcome; and then
turning to Helen, tenderly whispered her, "My Helen! in this moment of
my last on earth, O! engrave on thy heart, that--in the sacred words of
the patriarch of Israel--I remember thee, in the kindness of thy youth!
in the love of thy desolate espousals to me! when thou camest after me
into the wilderness, into a land thou didst not know, and comforted me!
And shalt thou not, my soul's bride, be sacred unto our Lord? the Lord
of the widow and the orphan! To Him I commit thee, in steadfast faith
that He will never forsake thee! Then, O, dearest part of myself, let
not the completion of my fate shake your dependence on the only True
and Just. Rejoice that Wallace has been deemed worthy to die for his
having done his duty. And what is death, my Helen, that we should shun
it, even to rebelling against the Lord of Life? Is it not the door
which opens to us immortality? and in that blest moment who will regret
that he passed through it in the bloom of his years? Come, then,
sister of my soul, and share with thy Wallace the last supper of his
Lord; the pledge of the happy eternity to which, by His grace, I now
ascend!"
Helen, conscience-struck and re-awakened to holy confidence by the
heavenly composure of his manner, obeyed the impulse of his hand, and
they both knelt before the minister of peace. While the sacred rite
proceeded, it seemed the indissoluble union of Helen's spirit with that
of Wallace: "My life will expire with his!" was her secret response to
the venerable man's exhortation to the anticipated passing soul; and
when he sealed Wallace with the holy cross, under the last unction, as
one who believed herself standing on the brink of eternity, she longed
to share also that mark of death. At that moment the dismal toll of a
bell sounded from the top of the Tower. The heart of Helen paused.
The warden and his train entered. "I will follow him," cried she,
starting from her knees, "into the grave itself!"
What was said, what was done, she knew not, till she found herself on
the scaffold, upheld by the arm of Gloucester. Wallace stood before
her, with his hands bound across and his noble head uncovered. His
eyes were turned upward, with a martyr's confidence in the Power he
served. A silence, as of some desert waste, reigned throughout the
thousands who stood below. The executioner approached to throw the
rope over the neck of his victim. At this sight, Helen, with a cry
that was re-echoed by the compassionate spectators, rushed to his bosom.
Wallace, with a mighty strength, burst the bands asunder which
confined his arms, and clasping her to him with a force that seemed to
make her touch his very heart, his breast heaved as if his soul were
breaking from its outraged tenement; and, while his head sunk on her
neck, he exclaimed, in a low and interrupted voice:
"My prayer is heard, Helen! Life's cord is cut by God's own hand! May
he preserve my country, and-- Oh! trust from my youth--"
He stopped--he fell; and with the shock, the hastily-erected scaffold
shook to its foundation. The pause was dreadful.
The executioner approached the prostrate chief. Helen was still locked
close in his arms. The man stooped to raise his victim, but the
attempt was beyond his strength. In vain he called on him--to
Helen--to separate, and cease from delaying the execution of the law;
no voice replied, no motion answered his loud remonstrance.
Gloucester, with an agitation which hardly allowed him power to speak
or move, remembered the words of Wallace, "that the rope of Edward
would never sully his animate body!" and, bending to his friend, he
spoke; but all was silent there. He raised the chieftain's head, and,
looking on his face, found indeed the indisputable stamp of death.
"There," cried he, in a burst of grief, and letting it fall again upon
the insensible bosom of Helen--"there broke the noblest heart that ever
beat in the breast of man!"
The priests, the executioners crowded round him at this declaration.
But, while giving a command in a low tone to the warden, he took the
motionless Helen in his arms, and leaving the astonished group round
the noble dead, carried her from the scaffold back into the Tower.**
**The last words of Wallace were from the 71st Psalm--"My trust from my
youth! O Lord God, thou art my hope unto the end!"