“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 with 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—