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 German 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.