Henry of Guise: The States of Blois. G. P. R. James

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      CHAPTER VI.

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      The windows were half closed, the room was silent, no sound reached the ear of Marie de Clairvaut, but the sweet wintry song of a robin perched upon the castle wall. Her first thoughts were of gratitude to Heaven for her escape from death, her next, of gratitude to him who had risked his life to save her. But after that came somewhat anxious and troublous thoughts.

      She recollected the moment when she woke to consciousness, and found herself clasped in his arms, with his heart beating against her bosom, with his cheek touching hers; she recollected that he had unclasped the collar round her neck; that he had chafed and warmed her hands in his; that he had dried her hair; that he had braided it back from her forehead; that he had borne her in his arms close to his heart: she recollected that her own hand, from the impulse of her heart, had pressed his; and that she herself had felt happy while resting on his bosom. As she thought of all these things, so different from any of the ideas that usually filled her mind, the warm blood rose in her cheek, though no one could see her; and turning round, she buried her eyes in the pillow with feelings of ingenuous shame; and yet even then the image of Charles of Montsoreau rose before her. She saw him, as she had beheld him when first they met, galloping down to aid her attendants in her defence; she saw him pointing the cannon of the castle against her pursuers; she saw him bearing with calm dignity the ill humour of his brother; she saw him, with passionate tenderness and grief, bending over her, and weeping when he thought her dead. She saw all this, and a consciousness came over her that there was no other being on all the earth on whose bosom she could rest with such happiness as on his.

      Nor did love want the advocates of nature and reason to support his cause. First came the thought of gratitude: she was grateful to God as the great cause of her deliverance; but ought she not to be grateful to him also, she asked herself, who was indeed--as every other human being is--an agent in the hand of the Almighty, but who was carried forward to that agency by every kindly, noble, and generous feeling, the contempt of danger and of death, and all those sensations and impulses which show most clearly the divinity that stirs within us?

      In being grateful to him, she felt that she was grateful to God; and it was easy for Marie de Clairvaut to believe that such gratitude should only be bounded by the vast extent of the service rendered.

      She did not exactly, in clear and distinct terms, ask herself whether she could refuse to devote to him the life that he had saved; but her heart answered the same question indirectly, and she thought that she could have no right to refuse him any thing that he might choose to ask as the recompense of the great benefit which he had conferred.

      What might he not ask? was her next question; and then came back the memory of every look which she had seen, of every word which she had heard, at the moment when she was just recovering; and those memories at once told her what he might and would seek as his guerdon. Was it painful for her to think that he might even crave herself as the boon?--Oh no! A week before, indeed, she would have shrunk from the very idea with pain. The only alternative she could have seen would have been to be miserable herself, or to make him miserable.

      Now such feelings were all changed and gone; and Marie de Clairvaut--having entertained those feelings sincerely, candidly, and without the slightest affectation--might feel surprised, and, perhaps, a little alarmed, at the change within herself; but she was by no means one to cling with any degree of pride or vanity to thoughts and purposes that were changed.

      It is true that those thoughts and purposes had been changing gradually towards Charles of Montsoreau. But it was the events of that day which suddenly and strangely had completed the alteration. The near approach of death--the plunge, as it were, into the jaws of the grave, from which she had been rescued as by a miracle--had seemed to waken in her new sensations towards all the warm relationships of life, a clinging to her kindred beings of the world, a tenderer, a nearer affection for the thrilling ties of human life.

      Then again, as regarded her young deliverer, and that near familiarity, from which the habit of her thoughts and the coldness of a heart unenlightened by love, had made her hitherto shrink with something more than maiden modesty:--in regard to these, her feelings had been suddenly and entirely changed by the circumstances in which she had been placed. It seemed as if to him, and for him, the first of all those icy barriers had been broken down, and was cast away for ever. She had been clasped in his arms--she had been pressed to his bosom--the warmth of his breath seemed still to play upon her cheek--her hand seemed still grasped in his; and when her mind returned to those ideas, after more than an hour of solitary thought, the memories--which at first had called the blood into her cheek, and made her hide her eyes for shame--were sweet and consoling. She thought that it was well to be thus--that it was well, as she could not but consent out of mere gratitude, to be the wife of Charles of Montsoreau if he sought her hand, that he should be the only man she could have ever made up her mind to wed; and that she could wed him with happiness.

      Such was the character of the thoughts that occupied her during the rest of the day. Her mind might, indeed, turn from time to time to her relations of the lordly house of Guise, and she might inquire what would be their opinion in regard to her marriage with the young Count of Logères. The first time that she thus questioned herself, she was somewhat startled to find that she entertained some apprehensions of opposition, for those apprehensions showed her, more than aught else had done before, how entirely changed her feelings were towards Charles of Montsoreau. They made her feel that it was no longer a mere cold consent she had to give to her marriage with him; but that it was a hope and expectation which would be painful to lose.

      The apprehensions themselves soon died away: she remembered the anxiety of both the Duke of Guise and the Duke of Mayenne that she should give her hand to some one, and she remembered, also, the half angry, half jesting remonstrances of both on her declaring her intention of entering a convent. She called to mind how they had urged her, some eight months before, to make a choice, representing to her that it was needful for their family to strengthen itself by every possible tie, and promising in no degree to thwart her inclinations if she chose one who would attach himself to them.

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