Tales and Novels Volume X Part 26

"But the very reason I can bear to look at you working, Helen,"

continued Lady Cecilia, "is, because you do look up so often--so refres.h.i.+ngly. The professed _Notables_ I detest--those who never raise their eyes from their everlasting work; whatever is said, read, thought, or felt, is with them of secondary importance to that bit of muslin in which they are making holes, or that bit of canva.s.s on which they are perpetrating such figures or flowers as nature scorns to look upon.

I did not mean anything against you mamma, I a.s.sure you," continued Cecilia, turning to her mother, who was also at her embroidering frame, "because, though you do work, or have work before you, to do you justice, you never attend to it in the least."

"Thank you! my dear Cecilia," said Lady Davenant, smiling; "I am, indeed, a sad bungler, but still I shall always maintain a great respect for work and workers, and I have good reasons for it."

"And so have I," said Lord Davenant. "I only wish that men who do not know what to do with their hands, were not ashamed to sew. If custom had but allowed us this resource, how many valuable lives might have been saved, how many rich ennuyes would not have hung themselves, even in November! What years of war, what overthrow of empires, might have been avoided, if princes and sultans, instead of throwing handkerchiefs, had but hemmed them!"

"No, no," said Lady Davenant, "recollect that the race of Spanish kings has somewhat deteriorated since they exchanged the sword for the tambour-frame. We had better have things as they are: leave us the privilege of the needle, and what a valuable resource it is; sovereign against the root of all evil--an antidote both to love in idleness and hate in idleness--which is most to be dreaded, let those who have felt both decide. I think we ladies must be allowed to keep the privilege of the needle to ourselves, humble though it be, for we must allow it is a good one."

"Good at need," said Churchill. "There is an excellent print, by Bouck, I believe, of an old woman beating the devil with a distaff; distaffs have been out of fas.h.i.+on with spinsters ever since, I fancy."

"But as she was old, Churchill," said Lord Davenant, "might not your lady have defied his black majesty, without her distaff?"

"His _black_ majesty! I admire your distinction, my lord," said Churchill, "but give it more emphasis; for all kings are not black in the eyes of the fair, it is said, you know." And here he began an anecdote of regal scandal in which Lady Cecilia stopped him----

"Now, Horace, I protest against your beginning with scandal so early in the morning. None of your _on dits_, for decency's sake, before luncheon; wait till evening."

Churchill coughed, and shrugged, and sighed, and declared he would be temperate; he would not touch a character, upon his honour; he would only indulge in a few little personalities; it could not hurt any lady's feelings that he should criticise or praise absent beauties. So he just made a review of all he could recollect, in answer to a question one of the officers, Captain Warmsley, had asked him, and which, in an absent fit, he had had the ill-manners yesterday, as now he recollected, not to answer--Whom he considered as altogether the handsomest woman of his acquaintance? Beauclerc was now in the room, and Horace was proud to display, before him in particular, his infinite knowledge of all the fair and fas.h.i.+onable, and all that might be admitted fas.h.i.+onable without being fair--all that have the _je ne sais quoi_, which is than beauty dearer. As one conscious of his power to consecrate or desecrate, by one look of disdain or one word of praise, he stood; and beginning at the lowest conceivable point, his uttermost notion of want of beauty--his _laid ideal_, naming one whose image, no doubt, every charitable imagination will here supply, Horace next fixed upon another for his mediocrity point--what he should call "just well enough"--_a.s.sez bien, a.s.sez_--just up to the Bellasis motto, "_Bonne et belle a.s.sez_." Then, in the ascending scale, he rose to those who, in common parlance, may be called charming, fascinating; and still for each he had his fastidious look and depreciating word. Just keeping within the verge, Horace, without exposing himself to the ridicule of c.o.xcombry, ended by sighing for that being 'made of every creature's best'--perfect, yet free from the curse of perfection. Then, suddenly turning to Beauclerc, and tapping him on the shoulder--"Do, give us your notions--to what sort of a body or mind, now, would you willingly bend the knee?"

Beauclerc could not or would not tell--"I only know that whenever I bend the knee," said he, "it will be because I cannot help it!"

Beauclerc could not be drawn out either by Churchill's persiflage or flattery, and he tried both, to talk of his tastes or opinions of women.

He felt too much perhaps about love to talk much about it. This all agreed well in Helen's imagination with what Lady Cecilia had told her of his secret engagement. She was sure he was thinking of Lady Blanche, and that he could not venture to describe her, lest he should betray himself and his secret. Then, leaving Churchill and the talkers, he walked up and down the room alone, at the further side, seeming as if he were recollecting some lines which he repeated to himself, and then stopping before Lady Cecilia, repeated to her, in a very low voice, the following:--

"I saw her upon nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too!

Her household motions light and free, And steps of virgin liberty; A countenance in which did meet Sweet records, promises as sweet; A creature not too bright or good For human nature's daily food; For transient sorrows, simple wiles, Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles."

Helen thought Lady Blanche must be a charming creature if she was like this picture; but somehow, as she afterwards told Lady Cecilia, she had formed a different idea of Lady Blanche Forrester--Cecilia smiled and asked, "How? different how?"

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 fas.h.i.+on. 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 a.s.suredly--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 circ.u.mstances.'" 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 fact.i.tious, imaginary interests.

But why do I say fact.i.tious? 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 embellis.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on; and now he meditated another change of style. He would try a n.o.ble 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.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

VOLUME THE SECOND.

CHAPTER I.

About this time a circ.u.mstance occurred, which seemed to have nothing to do with Churchill, or Beauclerc, but which eventually brought both their characters into action and pa.s.sion.

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 amateurs.h.i.+p.

Among these pictures were some fine Wouvermans, and other hunting and hawking pieces, and one in particular of the d.u.c.h.ess 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 gla.s.s 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, ill.u.s.trating 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 _a 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 call--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 Wilts.h.i.+re, 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 connoisseurs.h.i.+p, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton Irving quotes that in days of yore, 'a lady of rank did not think herself completely equipped in riding forth, unless she had her ta.s.sel-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--antic.i.p.ating the honour of seeing one of his hawks borne upon her delicate wrist.