Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  The expected pleasure of the first day’s hawking was now bright in his imagination; the day was named, the weather promised well, and the German cadgers and trainers who had been engaged, and who, along with the whole establishment, were handed over to Beauclerc, were to come down to Clarendon Park, and Beauclerc was very happy teaching the merlins to sit on Lady Cecilia’s and on Miss Stanley’s wrist. Helen’s voice was found to be peculiarly agreeable to the hawk, who, as Beauclerc observed, loved, like Lear, that excellent thing in woman, a voice ever soft, gentle, and low.

  The ladies were to wear some pretty dresses for the occasion, and all was gaiety and expectation; and Churchill was mortified when he saw how well the thing was likely to take, that he was not to be the giver of the fête, especially as he observed that Helen was particularly pleased — when, to his inexpressible surprise, Granville Beauclerc came to him, a few days before that appointed for the hawking-party, and said that he had changed his mind, that he wished to get rid of the whole concern — that he should be really obliged to Churchill if he would take his engagement off his hands. The only reason he gave was, that the establishment would altogether be more than he could afford, he found he had other calls for money, which were incompatible with his fancy, and therefore he would give it up.

  Churchill obliged him most willingly by taking the whole upon himself, and he managed so to do in a very ingenious way, without incurring any preposterous expense. He was acquainted with a set of rich, fashionable young men, who had taken a sporting lodge in a neighbouring county, who desired no better than to accede to the terms proposed, and to distinguish themselves by giving a fête out of the common line, while Churchill, who understood, like a true man of the world, the worldly art of bargaining, contrived, with off-hand gentleman-like jockeying, to have every point settled to his own convenience, and he was to be the giver of the entertainment to the ladies at Clarendon Park. When this change in affairs was announced, Lady Cecilia, the general, Lady Davenant, and Helen, were all, in various degrees, surprised, and each tried to guess what could have been the cause of Beauclerc’s sudden relinquishment of his purpose. He was — very extraordinary for him — impenetrable: he adhered to the words “I found I could not afford it.” His guardian could not believe in this wonderful prudence, and was almost certain “there must be some imprudence at the bottom of it all.”

  Granville neither admitted nor repelled that accusation. Lady Cecilia worked away with perpetual little strokes, hoping to strike out the truth, but, as she said, you might as well have worked at an old flint. Nothing was elicited from him, even by Lady Davenant; nor did the collision of all their opinions throw any light upon the matter.

  Meanwhile the day for the hawking-party arrived. Churchill gave the fete, and Beauclerc, as one of the guests, attended and enjoyed it without the least appearance even of disappointment; and, so far from envying Churchill, he assisted in remedying any little defects, and did all he could to make the whole go off well.

  The party assembled on a rising ground; a flag was displayed to give notice of the intended sport; the falconers appeared, picturesque figures in their green jackets and their long gloves, and their caps plumed with herons’ feathers — some with the birds on their wrists — one with the frame over his shoulder upon which to set the hawk. Set, did we say? — no: “cast your hawk on the perch” is, Beauclerc observed, the correct term; for, as Horace sarcastically remarked, Mr. Beauclerc might be detected as a novice in the art by his over-exactness; his too correct, too attic, pronunciation of the hawking language. But Granville readily and gaily bore all this ridicule and raillery, sure that it would neither stick nor stain, enjoying with all his heart the amusement of the scene — the assembled ladies, the attendant cavaliers; the hood-winked hawks, the ringing of their brass bells; the falconers anxiously watching the clouds for the first appearance of the bird; their skill in loosening the hoods, as, having but one hand at liberty, they used their teeth to untie the string: —— And now the hoods are off, and the hawks let fly.

  They were to fly many castes of hawks this day; the first flight was after a curlew; and the riding was so hard, so dangerous, from the broken nature of the ground, that the ladies gave it up, and were contented to view the sport from the eminence where they remained.

  And now there was a question to be decided among the sportsmen as to the comparative rate of riding at a fox chase, and in “the short, but terrifically hard gallop, with the eyes raised to the clouds, which is necessary for the full enjoyment of hawking;” and then the gentlemen, returning, gathered round the ladies, and the settling the point, watches in hand, and bets depending, added to the interest of flight the first, and Churchill, master of the revels, was in the highest spirits.

  But presently the sky was overcast, the morning lowered, the wind rose, and changed was Churchill’s brow; there is no such thing as hawking against the wind — that capricious wind!

  “Curse the wind!” cried Churchill; “and confusion seize the fellow who says there is to be no more hawking to-day!”

  The chief falconer, however, was a phlegmatic German, and proper-behaved, as good falconers should be, who, as “Old Tristram’s booke” has it, even if a bird should be lost, he should never swear, and only say, “Dieu soit loué,” and “remember that the mother of hawks is not dead.”

  But Horace, in the face of reason and in defiance of his German counsellors, insisted upon letting fly the hawks in this high wind; and it so fell out that, in the first place, all the terms he used in his haste and spleen were wrong; and in the next, that the quarry taking down the wind, the horsemen could not keep up with the hawks: the falconers in great alarm, called to them by the names they gave them—”Miss Didlington,” “Lord Berners.” “Ha! Miss Didlington’s off; — off with Blucher, and Lady Kirby, and Lord Berners, and all of ’em after her.” Miss Didlington flew fast and far, and further still, till she and all the rest were fairly out of sight — lost, lost, lost!

  “And as fine a caste of hawks they were as ever came from Germany!” — the falconers were in despair, and Churchill saw that the fault was his; and it looked so like cockney sportsmanship! If Horace had been in a towering rage, it would have been well enough; but he only grew pettish, snappish, waspish: now none of those words ending in ish become a gentleman; ladies always think so, and Lady Cecilia now thought so, and Helen thought so too, and Churchill saw it, and he grew pale instead of red, and that looks ugly in an angry man.

  But Beauclerc excused him when he was out of hearing; and when others said he had been cross, and crosser than became the giver of a gala, Beauclerc pleaded well for him, that falconry has ever been known to be “an extreme stirrer-up of the passions, being subject to mischances infinite.”

  However, a cold and hot collation under the trees for some, and under a tent for others, set all to rights for the present. Champagne sparkled, and Horace pledged and was pledged, and all were gay; even the Germans at their own table, after their own fashion, with their Rhenish and their foaming ale, contrived to drown the recollection of the sad adventure of the truant hawks.

  And when all were refreshed and renewed in mind and body, to the hawking they went again. For now that

  “The wind was laid, and all their fears asleep,”

  there was to be a battle between heron and hawk, one of the finest sights that can be in all falconry.

  “Look! look! Miss Stanley,” cried Granville; “look! follow that high-flown hawk — that black speck in the clouds. Now! now! right over the heron; and now she will canceleer — turn on her wing, Miss Stanley, as she comes down, whirl round, and balance herself — chanceler. Now! now look! cancelleering gloriously!”

  But Helen at this instant recollected what Captain Warmsley had said of the fresh-killed pigeon, which the falconer in the nick of time is to lay upon the heron’s back; and now, even as the cancelleering was going on — three times most beautifully, Helen saw only the dove, the white dove, which that black-hearted Germa
n held, his great hand round the throat, just raised to wring it. “Oh, Beauclerc, save it, save it!” cried Lady Cecilia and Helen at once.

  Beauclerc sprang forward, and, had it been a tiger instead of a dove, would have done the same no doubt at that moment; the dove was saved, and the heron killed. If Helen was pleased, so was not the chief falconer, nor any of the falconers, the whole German council in combustion! and Horace Churchill deeming it “Rather extraordinary that any gentleman should so interfere with other gentlemen’s hawks.”

  Lady Cecilia stepped between, and never stepped in vain. She drew a ring from her finger — a seal; it was the seal of peace — no great value — but a well-cut bird — a bird for the chief falconer — a guinea-hen, with its appropriate cry, its polite motto, “Come back, come back;” and she gave it as a pledge that the ladies would come back another day, and see another hawking; and the gentlemen were pleased, and the aggrieved attendant falconers pacified by a promise of another heron from the heronry at Clarendon Park; and the clouded faces brightened, and “she smoothed the raven down of darkness till it smiled,” whatever that may mean; but, as Milton said it, it must be sense as well as sound.

  At all events, in plain prose, be it understood that every body was satisfied, even Mr. Churchill; for Beauclerc had repaired for him, just in time, an error which would have been a blot on his gallantry of the day. He had forgotten to have some of the pretty grey hairs plucked from the heron, to give to the ladies to ornament their bonnets, but Beauclerc had secured them for him, and also two or three of those much-valued, smooth, black feathers, from the head of the bird, which are so much prized that a plume of them is often set with pearls and diamonds. Horace presented these most gracefully to Lady Cecilia and Helen, and was charmed with Lady Cecilia’s parting compliments, which finished with the words “Quite chivalrous.”

  And so, after all the changes and chances of weather, wind, and humour, all ended well, and no one rued the hawking of this day.

  CHAPTER II.

  “But all this time,” said Lady Davenant, “you have not told me whether you have any of you found out what changed Granville’s mind about this falconry scheme — why he so suddenly gave up the whole to Mr. Churchill. Such a point-blank weathercock turn of fancy in most young men would no more surprise me than the changes of those clouds in the sky, now shaped and now unshaped by the driving wind; but in Granville Beauclerc there is always some reason for apparent caprice, and the reason is often so ingeniously wrong that it amuses me to hear it; and even as a study in human nature, I am curious to know the simple fact.”

  But no one could tell the simple fact, no one could guess his reason, and from him it never would have been known — never could have been found out, but from a mistake — from a letter of thanks coming to a wrong person.

  One morning, when Helen was sitting in Lady Davenant’s room with her, Lord Davenant came in, reading a letter, like one walking in his sleep.

  “What is all this, my dear? Can you explain it to me? Some good action of yours, I suppose, for which I am to be thanked.”

  Lady Davenant looked at the letter. She had nothing to do with the matter, she said; but, on second thoughts, exclaimed, “This is Granville Beauclerc’s doing, I am clear!”

  The letter was from Count Polianski, one of the poor banished Poles; now poor, but who had been formerly master of a property estimated at about one hundred and sixty-five thousand available individuals. In attempting to increase the happiness and secure the liberty of these available individuals, the count had lost every thing, and had been banished from his country — a man of high feeling as well as talents, and who had done all he could for that unhappy country, torn to pieces by demagogues from within and tyrants from without.

  Lady Davenant now recollected that Beauclerc had learned from her all this, and had heard her regretting that the circumstances in which Lord Davenant was placed at this moment, prevented the possibility of his affording this poor count assistance for numbers of his suffering fellow-countrymen who had been banished along with him, and who were now in London in the utmost distress. Lady Davenant remembered that she had been speaking to Granville on this subject the very day that he had abandoned his falconry project. “Now I understand it all,” said she; “and it is like all I know and all I have hoped of him. These hundreds a-year which he has settled on these wretched exiles, are rather better disposed of in a noble national cause, than in pampering one set of birds that they may fly at another set.”

  “And yet this is done,” said Lord Davenant, “by one of the much reviled, high-bred English gentlemen — among whom, let the much reviling, low-bred English democrats say what they will, we find every day instances of subscription for public purposes from private benevolence, in a spirit of princely charity to be found only in our own dear England — England with all her faults.’”

  “But this was a less ordinary sort of generosity of Granville’s,” said Lady Davenant,—”the giving up a new pleasure, a new whim with all its gloss fresh upon it, full and bright in his eye.”

  “True,” said Lord Davenant; “I never saw a strong-pulling fancy better thrown upon its haunches.”

  The white dove, whose life Helen had saved, was brought home by Beauclerc, and was offered to her and accepted. Whether she had done a good or a bad action, by thus saving the life of a pigeon at the expense of a heron, may be doubted, and will be decided according to the several tastes of ladies and gentlemen for herons or doves. As Lady Davenant remarked, Helen’s humanity (or dove-anity, as Churchill called it,) was of that equivocal sort which is ready to destroy one creature to save another which may happen to be a greater favourite.

  Be this as it may, the favourite had a friend upon the present occasion, and no less a friend than General Clarendon, who presented it with a marble basin, such as doves should drink out of, by right of long prescription.

  The general feared, he said, “that this vase might be a little too deep — dangerously perhaps —— .”

  But Helen thought nothing could be altogether more perfect in taste and in kindness — approving Beauclerc’s kindness too — a remembrance of a day most agreeably spent. Churchill, to whom she looked, as she said the last words, with all becoming politeness, bowed and accepted the compliment, but with a reserve of jealousy on the brow; and as he looked again at the dove, caressing and caressed, and then at the classic vase — he stood vexed, and to himself he said, —

  “So this is the end of all my pains — hawking and all ‘quite chivalrous!’ Beauclerc carries off the honours and pleasures of the day, and his present and his dove are to be all in all. Yet still,” continued he to himself in more consolatory thought—”she is so open in her very love for the bird, that it is plain she has not yet any love for the man. She would be somewhat more afraid to show it, delicate as she is. It is only friendship — honest friendship, on her side; and if her affections be not engaged somewhere else — she may be mine: if — if I please — if — I can bring myself fairly to propose — we shall see — I shall think of it.”

  And now he began to think of it seriously. — Miss Stanley’s indifference to him, and the unusual difficulty which he found in making any impression, stimulated him in an extraordinary degree. Helen now appeared to him even more beautiful than he had at first thought her—”Those eyes that fix so softly,” thought he, “those dark eyelashes — that blush coming and going so beautifully — and there is a timid grace in all her motions, with that fine figure too — and that high-bred turn of the neck! — altogether she is charming! and she will be thought so! — she must be mine!”

  She would do credit to his taste; he thought she would, when she had a little more usage du monde, do the honours of his house well; and it would be delightful to train her! — If he could but engage her affections, before she had seen more of the world, she might really love him for his own sake — and Churchill wished to be really loved, if possible, for his own sake; but of the reality of modern love he justly do
ubted, especially for a man of his fortune and his age; yet, with Helen’s youth and innocence he began to think he had some chance of disinterested attachment, and he determined to bring out for her the higher powers of his mind — the better parts of his character.

  One day Lady Davenant had been speaking of London conversation. “So brilliant,” said she, “so short-lived, as my friend Lady Emmeline K —— once said, ‘London wit is like gas, which lights at a touch, and at a touch can be extinguished;’” and Lady Davenant concluded with a compliment to him who was known to have this “touch and go” of good conversation to perfection.

  Mr. Churchill bowed to the compliment, but afterwards sighed, and it seemed an honest sigh, from the bottom of his heart. Only Lady Davenant and Helen were in the room, and turning to Lady Davenant he said,

  “If I have it, I have paid dearly for it, more than it is worth, much too dearly, by the sacrifice of higher powers; I might have been a very different person from what I am.”

  Helen’s attention was instantly fixed; but Lady Davenant suspected he was now only talking for effect. He saw what she thought — it was partly true, but not quite. He felt what he said at the moment; and besides, there is always a sincere pleasure in speaking of one’s self when one can do it without exposing one’s self to ridicule, and with a chance of obtaining real sympathy.