The Man-at-Arms; or, Henry De Cerons. Volumes I and II

by G. P. R. James

I thought, however, of the days when I had sat upon his knee, and when he had said that he would make a little hero of me: that I should be a Bayard or a Du Guesclin.

He was absent after that visit for more than two years; and there were tales reached the chateau of some fair dame in the capital who withheld the baron from his wife, his children, and his duties, and kept him in bonds stronger than the green withes of Delilah.

The health of the baroness had for some time been declining; she had now been married ten years, and of that period she had known a few months perhaps of visionary happiness, two or three years of calm, unmurmuring tranquillity, and six or seven of anguish and sorrow. Her little girl, Louisa, was now nine years of age, the image of her mother in everything--features, complexion, disposition; there was the difference, of course, between the woman and the child, but still there was the same small, taper hand, the same beautiful foot, the same brilliant complexion, the same open, clear forehead, the same thoughtful but ingenuous smile. She was with her mother constantly or with me, and it was she who even at that age first discovered the progress of illness in the being she best loved, and pointed out to me the flushed cheek, the bright and glittering eye, the pale lips, and the features daily becoming sharp.

"Do you not think, Henry," she said to me one day, "That mamma looks ill?" And then she went on to say in what particular it appeared to her that it was so, showing that she had watched her mother's countenance in a way most strange for a child of her age.

When my attention was thus called to the subject, I remarked the change also, and I and Louisa used to watch with care and anxiety the progress of disease. We neither of us knew, we neither of us fully comprehended to what it all tended. It was not exactly fear that we entertained, but it was grief; we grieved to see her suffer, we grieved to see the languor and weakness that crept over her frame.

At length the baron returned, but his return contributed very little to the restoration of his wife's health. He brought with him many gay and riotous companions; the castle was filled with revelry and merriment: he was absent at the chase or in the city during the greater part of each day; and the night went down in songs, and mirth, and drinking. He soon went away again to the capital, and his wife continued withering slowly, like a flower, whose day of brightness is over.

Such was the course of events for some years till I reached the age of twenty, when the health of the baroness so completely and rapidly gave way, that messengers were sent off in all haste to call her husband to the side of her deathbed. He came, and, though he came unwillingly, yet he was evidently pained and struck at the sight of the ruin and decay which he now beheld. He was gloomy and sorrowful, and it might be some consolation to his dying wife to find that, when all was irrevocable, and neither tears nor regrets could recall the past, he mourned for the approaching loss of one whose worth he had not sufficiently estimated, and felt feelings of affection towards her which he had not known till it was too late.

The Lady of Blancford died, and the grief of all, good and bad alike, followed her to the grave; for there was a sweetness, and a gentleness, and a kindness in her nature which touched the heart even of the selfish and the vicious, and made them mourn for her as soon as her virtues were no longer a living reproach to their errors.

At the time of her death, her daughter and eldest child was little more than twelve years old, the two boys somewhat younger than eleven and ten; and well might the father, when he looked round upon their young faces, feel that his hearth was left desolate: well might he regret, in the bitterness of his heart, that he had not sufficiently valued the blessing he had possessed.

That he felt such sensations I am perfectly sure, but he felt them with a degree of sullenness as well as sorrow. Conscience lashed him, but he bore its chastisement with obdurate pride, and murmured at the smart.