This pardon was immediately accorded; and Bruce impetuously added:
"Lead me to these dear remains, that with redoubled certainty I may strike his murderer's heart! I came to succor him. I now stay to die—but not unrevenged!"
"I will lead you," returned the earl, "where you shall learn a different lesson. His soul will speak to you by the lips of his bride, now watching by those sacred relics. Feeble is now her lamp of life; but a saint's vigilance keeps it burning, till it may expire in the grave with him she so chastely loved."
A few words gave Bruce to understand that he meant Lady Helen Mar; and with a deepened grief when he heard in what an awful hour their hands were plighted, he followed his conductor through the quadrangle.
When Gloucester gently opened the door, which contained the remains of the bravest and the best, Bruce stood for a moment on the threshold. At the further end of the apartment, lighted by a solitary taper, lay the body of Wallace on a bier, covered with a soldier's cloak. Kneeling by its side, with her head on its bosom, was Helen. Her hair hung disordered over her shoulders, and shrouded with its dark locks the marble features of her beloved. Bruce scarcely breathed. He attempted to advance, but he staggered and fell against the wall. She looked up at the noise; but her momentary alarm ceased when she saw Gloucester. He spoke in a tender voice.
"Be not agitated, lady; but here is the Earl of Carrick."
"Nothing can agitate me more," replied she, turning mournfully toward the prince; who, raised from his momentary dizziness, beheld her regarding him with the look of one already an inhabitant of the grave. "Helen!" faintly articulated Bruce; "I come to share your sorrows, and to avenge them."
"Avenge them!" repeated she, after a pause; "is there aught in vengeance that can awaken life in these cold veins again? Let the murderers live in the world they have made a desert by the destruction of its brightest glory, and then our home will be his tomb!" Again she bent her head upon Wallace's cold breast; and seemed to forget that she had been spoken to—that Bruce was present.
"May I not look upon him?" cried he, grasping her hand. "Oh! Helen, show me that heroic face from whose beams my heart first caught the fire of virtue!" She moved; and the clay-hued features of all that was ever perfect in manly beauty met his sight. But the bright eyes were shut; the radiance of his smile was dimmed in death, yet still that smile was there. Bruce precipitated his lips to his, and sinking on his knees, remained in a silence only broken by his sighs.
It was an awful and heart-breaking pause, for the voice which in all scenes of weal or woe had ever mingled sweetly with theirs, was silent. Helen, who had not wept since the tremendous hour of the morning, now burst into an agony of tears; and the vehemence of her feelings tearing so delicate a frame (now rendered weak unto death by a consuming sickness, which her late exertions and present griefs had made seize on her very vitals), seemed to threaten the immediate extinction of her being. Bruce, aroused by her smothered cries, as she lay almost expiring, upheld by Gloucester, hurried to her side. By degrees she recovered to life and observance; but finding herself removed from the bier, she sprang wildly toward it. Bruce caught her arm to support her tottering steps. She looked steadfastly at him, and then at the motionless body. "He is there," cried she, "and yet he speaks not! He soothes not my grief—I weep, and he does not comfort me! And there he lies! O! Bruce, can this be possible? Do I really see him dead? And what is death?" added she, grasping the cold hand of Wallace to her heart. "Didst thou not tell me, when this hand pressed mine and blessed me, that it was only a translation from grief to joy? And is it not so, Bruce? Behold how we mourn and he is happy! I will obey thee, my immortal Wallace!" cried she, casting her arms about him; "I will obey thee, and weep no more!"