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.’”