Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

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by Maria Edgeworth


  Helen did not exactly know, but altogether she had imagined that she must be more of a heroine, or perhaps more of a woman of rank and fashion. She had not formed any exact idea — but different altogether from this description. Lady Cecilia again smiled, and said, “Very natural; and after all not very certain that the Lady Blanche is like this picture, which was not drawn for her or from her assuredly — a resemblance found only in the imagination, to which we are, all of us, more or less, dupes; and tant mieux say I — tant pis says mamma — and all mothers.”

  “There is one thing I like better in Mr. Beauclerc’s manners than in Mr. Churchill,” said Helen.

  “There are a hundred I like better,” said Lady Cecilia, “but what is your one thing?”

  “That he always speaks of women in general with respect — as if he had more confidence in them, and more dependence upon them for his happiness. Now Mr. Churchill, with all the adoration he professes, seems to look upon them as idols that he can set up or pull down, bend the knee to or break to pieces, at pleasure — I could not like a man for a friend who had a bad, or even a contemptuous, opinion of women — could you, Cecilia?”

  “Certainly not,” Lady Cecilia said; “the general had always, naturally, the greatest respect for women. Whatever prejudices he had taken up had been only caught from others, and lasted only till he had got rid of the impression of certain ‘untoward circumstances.’” Even a grave, serious dislike, both Lady Cecilia and Helen agreed that they could bear better than that persiflage which seemed to mock even while it most professed to admire.

  Horace presently discovered the mistakes he had made in his attempts, and repaired them as fast as he could by his infinite versatility. The changes shaded off with a skill which made them run easily into each other. He perceived that Mr. Beauclerc’s respectful air and tone were preferred, and he now laid himself out in the respectful line, adding, as he flattered himself, something of a finer point, more polish in whatever he said, and with more weight of authority.

  But he was mortified to find that it did not produce the expected effect, and, after having done the respectful one morning, as he fancied, in the happiest manner, he was vexed to perceive that he not only could not raise Helen’s eyes from her work, but that even Lady Davenant did not attend to him: and that, as he was rounding one of his best periods, her looks were directed to the other side of the room, where Beauclerc sat apart; and presently she called to him, and begged to know what it was he was reading. She said she quite envied him the power he possessed of being rapt into future times or past, completely at his author’s bidding, to be transported how and where he pleased.

  Beauclerc brought the book to her, and put it into her hand. As she took it she said, “As we advance in life, it becomes more and more difficult to find in any book the sort of enchanting, entrancing interest which we enjoyed when life, and, books, and we ourselves were new. It were vain to try and settle whether the fault is most in modern books, or in our ancient selves; probably not in either: the fact is, that not only does the imagination cool and weaken as we grow older, but we become, as we live on in this world, too much engrossed by the real business and cares of life, to have feeling or time for factitious, imaginary interests. But why do I say factitious? while they last, the imaginative interests are as real as any others.”

  “Thank you,” said Beauclerc, “for doing justice to poor imagination, whose pleasures are surely, after all, the highest, the most real, that we have, unwarrantably as they have been decried both by metaphysicians and physicians.”

  The book which had so fixed Beauclerc’s attention, was Segur’s History of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign. He was at the page where the burning of Moscow is described — the picture of Buonaparte’s despair, when he met resolution greater than his own, when he felt himself vanquished by the human mind, by patriotism, by virtue — virtue in which he could not believe, the existence of which, with all his imagination, he could not conceive: the power which his indomitable will could not conquer.

  Beauclerc pointed to the account of that famous inscription on the iron gate of a church which the French found still standing, the words written by Rostopchin after the burning of his “delightful home.”

  “Frenchmen, I have been eight years in embellishing this residence; I have lived in it happily in the bosom of my family. The inhabitants of this estate (amounting to seventeen hundred and twenty) have quitted it at your approach; and I have, with my own hands, set fire to my own house, to prevent it from being polluted by your presence.”

  “See what one, even one, magnanimous individual can do for his country,” exclaimed Beauclerc. “How little did this sacrifice cost him! Sacrifice do I say? it was a pride — a pleasure.”

  Churchill did not at all like the expression of Helen’s countenance, for he perceived she sympathised with Beauclerc’s enthusiasm. He saw that romantic enthusiasm had more charm for her than wit or fashion; and now he meditated another change of style. He would try a noble style. He resolved that the first convenient opportunity he would be a little romantic, and perhaps, even take a touch at chivalry, a burst like Beauclerc, but in a way of his own, at the degeneracy of modern times. He tried it — but it was quite a failure; Lady Cecilia, as he overheard, whispered to Helen what was once so happily said—”Ah! le pauvre homme! comme il se batte les flancs d’un enthousiasme de commande.”

  Horace was too clever a man to persist in a wrong line, or one in which his test of right success did not crown his endeavours. If this did not do, something else would — should, It was impossible that with all his spirit of resource he should ultimately fail. To please, and to make an impression on Helen, a greater impression than Beauclerc — to annoy Beauclerc, in short, was still, independently of all serious thoughts, the utmost object of Churchill’s endeavours.

  VOLUME THE SECOND.

  CHAPTER I.

  About this time a circumstance occurred, which seemed to have nothing to do with Churchill, or Beauclerc, but which eventually brought both their characters into action and passion.

  Lord Davenant had purchased, at the sale of Dean Stanley’s pictures, several of those which had been the dean’s favourites, and which, independently of their positive merit, were peculiarly dear to Helen. He had ordered that they should be sent down to Clarendon Park; at first, he only begged house-room for them from the general while he and Lady Davenant were in Russia; then he said that in case he should never return he wished the pictures should be divided between his two dear children, Cecilia and Helen; and that, to prevent disputes, he would make the distribution of them himself now, and in the kindest and most playful manner he allotted them to each, always finding some excellent reason for giving to Helen those which he knew she liked best; and then there was to be a hanging committee, for hanging the pictures, which occasioned a great deal of talking, Beauclerc always thinking most of Helen, or of what was really best for the paintings; Horace most of himself and his amateurship.

  Among these pictures were some fine Wouvermans, and other hunting and hawking pieces, and one in particular of the duchess and her ladies, from Don Quixote. Beauclerc, who had gone round examining and admiring, stood fixed when he came to this picture, in which he fancied he discovered in one of the figures some likeness to Helen; the lady had a hawk upon her wrist. Churchill came up eagerly to the examination, with glass at eye. He could not discern the slightest resemblance to Miss Stanley; but he was in haste to, bring out an excellent observation of his own, which he had made his own from a Quarterly Review, illustrating the advantage it would be to painters to possess knowledge, even of kinds seemingly most distant from the line of their profession.

  “For instance, now à priori, one should not insist upon a great painter’s being a good ornithologist, and yet, for want of being something of a bird-fancier, look here what he has done — quite absurd, a sort of hawk introduced, such as never was or could be at any hawking affair in nature: would not sit upon lady’s wrist or answer to her c
all — would never fly at a bird. Now you see this is a ridiculous blunder.”

  While Churchill plumed himself on this critical remark Captain Warmsley told of who still kept hawks in England, and of the hawking parties he had seen and heard of—”even this year, that famous hawking in Wiltshire, and that other in Norfolk.”

  Churchill asked Warmsley if he had been at Lord Berner’s when Landseer was there studying the subject of his famous hawking scene. “Have you seen it, Lady Cecilia?” continued he; “it is beautiful; the birds seem to be absolutely coming out of the picture;” and he was going on with some of his connoisseurship, and telling of his mortification in having missed the purchase of that picture; but Warmsley got back to the hawking he had seen, and he became absolutely eloquent in describing the sport.

  Churchill, though eager to speak, listened with tolerably polite patience till Warmsley came to what he had forgot to mention, — to the label with the date of place and year that is put upon the heron’s leg; to the heron brought from Denmark, where it had been caught, with the label of having been let fly from Lord Berner’s; “for,” continued he, “the heron is always to be saved if possible, so, when it is down, and the hawk over it, the falconer has some raw beef ready minced, and lays it on the heron’s back, or a pigeon, just killed, is sometimes used; the hawk devours it, and the heron, quite safe, as soon as it recovers from its fright, mounts slowly upward and returns to its heronry.”

  Helen listened eagerly, and so did Lady Cecilia, who said, “You know, Helen, our favourite Washington Irving quotes that in days of yore, ‘a lady of rank did not think herself completely equipped in riding forth, unless she had her tassel-gentel held by jesses on her delicate hand.’”

  Before her words were well finished, Beauclerc had decided what he would do, and the business was half done that is well begun. He was at the library table, writing as fast as pen could go, to give carte blanche to a friend, to secure for him immediately a whole hawking establishment which Warmsley had mentioned, and which was now upon public sale, or privately to be parted with by the present possessor.

  At the very moment when Beauclerc was signing and sealing at one end of the room, at the other Horace Churchill, to whom something of the same plan had occurred, was charming Lady Cecilia Clarendon, by hinting to her his scheme — anticipating the honour of seeing one of his hawks borne upon her delicate wrist.

  Beauclerc, after despatching his letter, came up just in time to catch the sound and the sense, and took Horace aside to tell him what he had done. Horace looked vexed, and haughtily observed, that he conceived his place at Erlesmede was better calculated for a hawking party than most places in England; and he had already announced his intentions to the ladies. The way was open to him — but Beauclerc did not see why he should recede; the same post might carry both their letters — both their orders!

  “How far did your order go, may I ask?” said Churchill.

  “Carte blanche.”

  Churchill owned, with a sarcastic smile, that he was not prepared to go quite so far. He was not quite so young as Granville; he, unfortunately, had arrived at years of discretion — he said unfortunately; without ironical reservation, he protested from the bottom of his heart he considered it as a misfortune to have become that slow circumspect sort of creature which looks before it leaps. Even though this might save him from the fate of the man who was in Sicily, still he considered it as unfortunate to have lost so much of his natural enthusiasm.

  “Natural enthusiasm!” Beauclerc could not help repeating to himself, and he went on his own way. It must be confessed, as even Beauclerc’s best friends allowed, counting among them Lady Davenant and his guardian, that never was man of sense more subject to that kind of temporary derangement of the reasoning powers which results from being what is called bit by a fancy; he would then run on straight forward, without looking to the right or the left, in pursuit of his object, great or small. That hawking establishment now in view, completely shut out, for the moment, all other objects; “of tercels and of lures he talks;” and before his imagination were hawking scenes, and Helen with a hawk on her wrist, looking most graceful — a hawk of his own training it should be. Then, how to train a hawk became the question. While he was waiting for the answer to his carte blanche, nothing better, or so good, could be done, as to make himself master of the whole business, and for this purpose he found it essential to consult every book on falconry that could be found in the library, and a great plague he became to everybody in the course of this book-hunt.

  “What a bore!” Warmsley might be excused for muttering deep and low between the teeth. General Clarendon sighed and groaned. Lady Davenant bore and forebore philosophically — it was for Beauclerc; and to her great philosophy she gave all the credit of her indulgent partiality. Lady Cecilia, half-annoyed yet ever good-natured, carried her complaisance so far as to consult the catalogue and book-shelves sundry times in one hour; but she was not famous for patience, and she soon resigned him to a better friend — Helen, the most indefatigable of book-hunters. She had been well trained to it by her uncle; had been used to it all her life; and really took pleasure in the tiresome business. She assured Beauclerc it was not the least trouble, and he thought she looked beautiful when she said so. Whosoever of the male kind, young, and of ardent, not to say impatient, spirit, has ever been aided and abetted in a sudden whim, assisted, forwarded, above all, sympathised with, through all the changes and chances of a reigning fancy, may possibly conceive how charming, and more charming every hour, perhaps minute, Helen became in Beauclerc’s eyes. But, all in the way of friendship observe. Perfectly so — on her part, for she could not have another idea, and it was for this reason she was so much at her ease. He so understood it, and, thoroughly a gentleman, free from coxcombry, as he was, and interpreting the language and manners of women with instinctive delicacy, they went on delightfully. Churchill was on the watch, but he was not alarmed; all was so undisguised and frank, that now he began to feel assured that love on her side not only was, but ever would be, quite out of the question.

  Beauclerc was, indeed, in the present instance, really and truly intent upon what he was about; and he pursued the History of Falconry, with all its episodes, from the olden time of the Boke of St. Alban’s down to the last number of the Sporting Magazine, including Colonel Thornton’s latest flight, with the adventures of his red falcons, Miss M’Ghee and Lord Townsend, and his red tercels, Messrs. Croc Franc and Craignon; — not forgetting that never-to-be forgotten hawking of the Emperor Arambombamboberus with Trebizonian eagles, on the authority of a manuscript in the Grand Signior’s library.

  Beauclerc had such extraordinary dependence upon the sympathy of his friends, that, when he was reading any thing that interested him, no matter what they might be doing, he must have their admiration for what charmed him. He brought his book to Lord Davenant, who was writing a letter. “Listen, oh listen! to this pathetic lament of the falconer,—’Hawks, heretofore the pride of royalty, the insignia of nobility, the ambassador’s present, the priest’s indulgence, companion of the knight, and nursling of the gentle mistress, are now uncalled-for and neglected.’”

  “Ha! very well that,” said good-natured Lord Davenant, stopping his pen, dipping again, dotting, and going on.

  Then Beauclerc passaged to Lady Davenant, and, interrupting her in Scott’s Lives of the Novelists, on which she was deeply intent, “Allow me, my dear Lady Davenant, though you say you are no great topographer, to show you this, it is so curious; this royal falconer’s proclamation — Henry the Eighth’s — to preserve his partridges, pheasants, and herons, from his palace at Westminster to St. Giles’s in the Fields, and from thence to Islington, Hampstead, and Highgate, under penalty for every bird killed of imprisonment, or whatever other punishment to his highness may seem meet.”

  Lady Davenant vouchsafed some suitable remark, consonant to expectation, on the changes of times and places, and men and manners, and then motioned the quarto away wi
th which motion the quarto reluctantly complied; and then following Lady Cecilia from window to window, as she tended her flowers, he would insist upon her hearing the table of precedence for hawks. She, who never cared for any table of precedence in her life, even where the higher animals were concerned, would only undertake to remember that the merlin was a lady’s hawk, and this only upon condition, that she should have one to sit upon her wrist like the fair ladies in Wouvermans’ pictures. But further, as to Peregrine, Gerfalcon, or Gerkin, she would hear nought of them, nor could she listen, though Granville earnestly exhorted, to the several good reasons which make a falcon dislike her master —

  1st. If he speak rudely to her. 2nd. If he feed her carelessly.

  Before he could get thirdly out, Lady Cecilia stopped him, declaring that in all her life she never could listen to any thing that began with first and secondly — reasons especially.

  Horace, meanwhile, looked superior down, and thought with ineffable contempt of Beauclerc’s little skill in the arts of conversation, thus upon unwilling ears to squander anecdotes which would have done him credit at some London dinner.

  “What I could have made of them! and may make of them yet,” thought he; “but some there are, who never can contrive, as other some cleverly do, to ride their hobby-horses to good purpose and good effect; — now Beauclerc’s hobbies, I plainly see, will always run away with him headlong, cost him dear certainly, and, may be, leave him in the mire at last.”

  What this fancy was to cost him, Beauclerc did not yet know. Two or three passages in the Sporting Magazine had given some hints of the expense of this “most delectable of all country contentments,” which he had not thought it necessary to read aloud. And he knew that the late Lord Orford, an ardent pursuer of this “royal and noble” sport, had expended one hundred a-year on every hawk he kept, each requiring a separate attendant, and being moreover indulged in an excursion to the Continent every season during moulting-time: but Beauclerc said to himself he had no notion of humouring his hawks to that degree; they should, aristocratic birds though they be, content themselves in England, and not pretend to “damn the climate like a lord.” And he flattered himself that he should be able to pursue his fancy more cheaply than any of his predecessors; but as he had promised his guardian that, after the indulgence granted him in the Beltravers’ cause, he would not call upon him for any more extraordinary supplies, he resolved, in case the expense exceeded his ways and means, to sell his hunters, and so indulge in a new love at the expense of an old one.

 

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