“Another invariable rule, in crawling upon ducks, is always, if possible, to get to leeward of them; for although I am firmly of opinion that they do not wind you like deer, as some suppose, yet their hearing is most acute. I have seen instances of this that I could hardly otherwise have credited. One day I got within about sixty yards of three ducks asleep upon the shore; the wind was blowing very strong, direct from me to them, a thick hedge forming my ambuscade. The ground was quite bare beyond this hedge, so I was obliged to take the distant shot through it. In making the attempt, I rustled one of the twigs—up went the three heads to the full stretch; but when I had remained quiet for about five minutes, they again placed their bills under their wings. Upon a second trial, the slight noise was unfortunately repeated—again the birds raised their heads; but this time they were much longer upon the stretch, and seemed more uneasy. Nothing now remained but to try again: my utmost caution, however, was unavailing—the birds rose like rockets. I never hesitate concealing myself to windward of the spot where I expect ducks to pitch, feeling confident that, unless I move, they will not find me out. I have often had them swimming within twenty-five yards of me, when I was waiting for three or four in line, the wind blowing direct from me to them, without perceiving, by any signs, their consciousness of an enemy’s vicinity.”
Macwheedle himself, by all that’s impudent! Nay, then, it is full time for us to take our farewell of Mr Colquhoun, and address ourselves to our public duty. We shall meet the honourable candidate in that style of diplomacy which was imparted to us by old Talleyrand, and in which, we flatter ourselves, we have no equal, with the exception, perhaps, of the accomplished Dunshunner. That gay individual is, doubtless, at this moment wooing some bashful constituency—we trust with prospects of better success than attended his last adventure. When the elections are over, we shall lose not a moment in hastening to the Highlands—there, by glen and river, loch, moor, and mountain, to obliterate all memory of the heat and hurry of the hustings; and we hope, before the year is over, to hear from the lips of many of our friends, who are now looking forward with anxiety to their first sporting season, an acknowledgment of the benefit which they have derived from the practical lessons of our author. Now, then, for an interview with the too insinuating Macwheedle.
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.
BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.
BOOK XI. CONTINUED—CHAPTER XVII.
When the scenes in some long diorama pass solemnly before us, there is sometimes one solitary object, contrasting, perhaps, the view of stately cities or the march of a mighty river, that halts on the eye for a moment, and then glides away, leaving on the mind a strange, comfortless, undefined impression.
Why was the object presented to us? In itself it seemed comparatively insignificant. It may have been but a broken column—a lonely pool with a star-beam on its quiet surface—yet it awes us. We remember it when phantasmal pictures of bright Damascus, or of colossal pyramids—of bazaars in Stamboul, or lengthened caravans that defile slow amidst the sands of Araby—have sated the wondering gaze. Why were we detained in the shadowy procession by a thing that would have been so commonplace had it not been so lone? Some latent interest must attach to it. Was it there that a vision of woe had lifted the wild hair of a Prophet?—there where some Hagar had stilled the wail of her child on her indignant breast? We would fain call back the pageantry procession—fain see again the solitary thing that seemed so little worth the hand of the artist—and ask, “Why art thou here, and wherefore dost thou haunt us?”
Rise up—rise up once more—by the broad great thoroughfare that stretches onward and onward to the remorseless London——Rise up—rise up—O solitary tree with the green leaves on thy bough, and the deep rents in thy heart; and the ravens, dark birds of omen and sorrow, that built their nest amidst the leaves of the bough, and drop with noiseless plumes down through the hollow rents of the heart—or are heard, it may be, in the growing shadows of twilight, calling out to their young!
Under the old pollard tree, by the side of John Avenel’s house, there cowered, breathless and listening, John Avenel’s daughter Nora. Now, when that fatal newspaper paragraph, which lied so like truth, met her eyes, she obeyed the first impulse of her passionate heart—she tore the wedding ring from her finger—she enclosed it, with the paragraph itself, in a letter to Audley—a letter that she designed to convey scorn and pride—alas! it expressed only jealousy and love. She could not rest till she had put this letter into the post with her own hand, addressed to Audley at Lord Lansmere’s. Scarce was it gone ere she repented. What had she done?—resigned the birthright of the child she was so soon to bring into the world—resigned her last hope in her lover’s honour—given up her life of life—and from belief in what?—a report in a newspaper! No, no; she would go herself to Lansmere; to her father’s home—she could contrive to see Audley before that letter reached his hand. The thought was scarcely conceived before obeyed. She found a vacant place in a coach that started from London some hours before the mail, and went within a few miles of Lansmere; those last miles she travelled on foot. Exhausted—fainting—she gained at last the sight of home, and there halted, for in the little garden in front she saw her parents seated. She heard the murmur of their voices, and suddenly she remembered her altered shape, her terrible secret. How answer the question, “Daughter, where and who is thy husband?” Her heart failed her; she crept under the old pollard tree, to gather up resolve, to watch and to listen. She saw the rigid face of the thrifty prudent mother, with the deep lines that told of the cares of an anxious life, and the chafe of excitable temper and warm affections against the restraint of decorous sanctimony and resolute pride. The dear stern face never seemed to her more dear and more stern. She saw the comely, easy, indolent, good-humoured father; not then the poor, paralytic sufferer, who could yet recognise Nora’s eyes under the lids of Leonard, but stalwart and jovial—first bat in the Cricket Club, first voice in the Glee Society, the most popular canvasser of the Lansmere Constitutional True Blue Party, and the pride and idol of the Calvinistical prim wife. Never from those pinched lips of hers had come forth even one pious rebuke to the careless social man. As he sate, one hand in his vest, his profile turned to the road, the light smoke curling playfully up from the pipe, over which lips, accustomed to bland smile and hearty laughter, closed as if reluctant to be closed at all, he was the very model of the respectable retired trader in easy circumstances, and released from the toil of making money while life could yet enjoy the delight of spending it.
“Well, old woman,” said John Avenel, “I must be off presently to see to those three shaky voters in Fish Lane; they will have done their work soon, and I shall catch ’em at home. They do say as how we may have an opposition; and I know that old Smikes has gone to Lonnon in search of a candidate. We can’t have the Lansmere Constitutional Blues beat by a Lonnoner! Ha, ha, ha!”