“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.’”
“But this was a less ordinary sort of generosity of Granville’s,” said
Lady Davenant,--“the giving up a new pleasure, a new whim with all its
gloss fresh upon it, full and bright in his eye.”
“True,” said Lord Davenant; “I never saw a strong-pulling fancy better
thrown upon its haunches.”
The white dove, whose life Helen had saved, was brought home by
Beauclerc, and was offered to her and accepted. Whether she had done a
good or a bad action, by thus saving the life of a pigeon at the expense
of a heron, may be doubted, and will be decided according to the several
tastes of ladies and gentlemen for herons or doves. As Lady Davenant
remarked, Helen’s humanity (or dove-anity, as Churchill called it,) was
of that equivocal sort which is ready to destroy one creature to save
another which may happen to be a greater favourite.
Be this as it may, the favourite had a friend upon the present occasion,
and no less a friend than General Clarendon, who presented it with
a marble basin, such as doves should drink out of, by right of long
prescription.
The general feared, he said, “that this vase might be a little too
deep--dangerously perhaps----.”
But Helen thought nothing could be altogether more perfect in taste and
in kindness--approving Beauclerc’s kindness too--a remembrance of a day
most agreeably spent. Churchill, to whom she looked, as she said
the last words, with all becoming politeness, bowed and accepted the
compliment, but with a reserve of jealousy on the brow; and as he looked
again at the dove, caressing and caressed, and then at the classic
vase--he stood vexed, and to himself he said,--
“So this is the end of all my pains--hawking and all ‘quite chivalrous!’
Beauclerc carries off the honours and pleasures of the day, and his
present and his dove are to be all in all. Yet still,” continued he to
himself in more consolatory thought--“she is so open in her very love
for the bird, that it is plain she has not yet any love for the man. She
would be somewhat more afraid to show it, delicate as she is. It is only
friendship--honest friendship, on her side; and if her affections be
not engaged somewhere else--she may be mine: if--if I please--if--I can
bring myself fairly to propose--we shall see--I shall think of it.”
And now he began to think of it seriously.--Miss Stanley’s indifference
to him, and the unusual difficulty which he found in making any
impression, stimulated him in an extraordinary degree. Helen now
appeared to him even more beautiful than he had at first thought
her--“Those eyes that fix so softly,” thought he, “those dark
eyelashes--that blush coming and going so beautifully--and there is
a timid grace in all her motions, with that fine figure too--and that
high-bred turn of the neck!--altogether she is charming! and she will be
thought so!--she must be mine!”
She would do credit to his taste; he thought she would, when she had a
little more _usage du monde_, do the honours of his house well; and
it would be delightful to train her!--If he could but engage her
affections, before she had seen more of the world, she might really
love him for his own sake--and Churchill wished to be really loved, if
possible, for his own sake; but of the reality of modern love he justly
doubted, especially for a man of his fortune and his age; yet, with
Helen’s youth and innocence he began to think he had some chance of
disinterested attachment, and he determined to bring out for her the
higher powers of his mind--the better parts of his character.
One day Lady Davenant had been speaking of London conversation. “So
brilliant,” said she, “so short-lived, as my friend Lady Emmeline
K----once said, ‘London wit is like gas, which lights at a touch, and
at a touch can be extinguished;’” and Lady Davenant concluded with a
compliment to him who was known to have this “_touch and go_” of good
conversation to perfection.
Mr. Churchill bowed to the compliment, but afterwards sighed, and it
seemed an honest sigh, from the bottom of his heart. Only Lady Davenant
and Helen were in the room, and turning to Lady Davenant he said,
“If I have it, I have paid dearly for it, more than it is worth, much
too dearly, by the sacrifice of higher powers; I might have been a very
different person from what I am.”
Helen’s attention was instantly fixed; but Lady Davenant suspected he
was now only talking for effect. He saw what she thought--it was partly
true, but not quite. He felt what he said at the moment; and besides,
there is always a sincere pleasure in speaking of one’s self when one
can do it without exposing one’s self to ridicule, and with a chance of
obtaining real sympathy.
“It was my misfortune,” he said, “to be spoiled, even in childhood, by
my mother.”
As he pronounced the word “mother,” either his own heart or Helen’s eyes
made him pause with a look of respectful tenderness. It was cruel of
a son to blame the fond indulgence of a mother; but the fact was, she
brought him too forward early as a clever child, fed him too much with
that sweet dangerous fostering dew of praise. The child--the man--must
suffer for it afterwards.
“True, very true,” said Lady Davenant; “I quite agree with you.”
“I could do nothing without flattery,” continued he, pursuing the
line of confession which he saw had fixed Lady Davenant’s attention
favourably. “Unluckily, I came too early into possession of a large
fortune, and into the London world, and I lapped the stream of
prosperity as I ran, and it was sweet with flattery, intoxicating, and I
knew it, and yet could not forbear it. Then in a London life every thing
is too stimulating--over-exciting. If there are great advantages to men
of science and literature in museums and public libraries, the more
than _Avicenna_ advantages of having books come at will, and ministering
spirits in waiting on all your pursuits--there is too much of every
thing except time, and too little of that. The treasures are within
our reach, but we cannot clutch; we have, but we cannot hold. We have
neither leisure to be good, nor to be great: who can think of living for
posterity, when he can scarcely live for the day? and sufficient for the
day are never the hours thereof. From want of time, and from the immense
quantity that nevertheless must be known, comes the necessity, the
unavoidable necessity of being superficial.”
“Why should it be unavoidable necessity?” asked Lady Davenant.
“Because _should_ waits upon _must_, in London always, if not
elsewhere,” said Churchill.
“A conversation answer,” replied Lady Davenant.
“Yes, I allow it; it is even so, just so, and to such tricks, such
playing upon words, do the bad habits of London conversation lead;” and
Lady Davenant wondered at the courage of his candour, as he went on to
speak of the petty jealousies, the paltry envy, the miserable selfish
susceptibility generated by the daily competition of London society.
Such dissensions, such squabbles--an ignoble but appropriate word--such
deplorable, such scandalous squabbles among literary, and even among
scientific men. “And who,” continued he, “who can hope to escape in such
a tainted atmosphere--an atmosphere overloaded with life, peopled with
myriads of little buzzing stinging vanities! It really requires
the strength of Hercules, mind and body, to go through our labours,
fashionable, political, _bel esprit_, altogether too much for mortal.
In parliament, in politics, in the tug of war you see how the strongest
minds fail, come to untimely----”
“Do not touch upon that subject,” cried Lady Davenant, suddenly
agitated. Then, commanding herself, she calmly added--“As you are
not now, I think, in parliament, it cannot affect you. What were you
saying?--your health of mind and body, I think you said, you were
sensible had been hurt by----”
“These straining, incessant competitions have hurt me. My health
suffered first, then my temper. It was originally good, now, as you have
seen, I am afraid”--glancing at Helen, who quickly looked down, “I am
afraid I am irritable.”
There was an awkward silence. Helen thought it was for Lady Davenant to
speak; but Lady Davenant did not contradict Mr. Churchill. Now, the
not contradicting a person who is abusing himself, is one of the most
heinous offences to self-love that can be committed; and it often
provokes false candour to pull off the mask and throw it in your face;
but either Mr. Horace Churchill’s candour was true, or it was so well
guarded at the moment that no such catastrophe occurred.
“Worse than this bad effect on my temper!” continued he, “I feel that my
whole mind has been deteriorated--my ambition dwindled to the shortest
span--my thoughts contracted to the narrow view of mere effect; what
would please at the dinner-table or at the clubs--what will be thought
of me by this literary coterie, or in that fashionable boudoir. And
for this _reputation de salon_ I have sacrificed all hope of other
reputation, all power of obtaining it, all hope of “----(here he added a
few words, murmured down to Lady Davenant’s embroidery frame, yet still
in such a tone that Helen could not help thinking he meant she should
hear)--“If I had a heart such as--” he paused, and, as if struck with
some agonising thought, he sighed deeply, and then added--“but I have
not a heart worth such acceptance, or I would make the offer.”
Helen was not sure what these words meant, but she now pitied him, and
she admired his candour, which she thought was so far above the petty
sort of character he had at first done himself the injustice to seem,
and she seized the first opportunity to tell Beauclerc all Mr. Churchill
had said to Lady Davenant and to her, and of the impression it had made
upon them both. Beauclerc had often discussed Mr. Churchill’s character
with her, but she was disappointed when she saw that what she told made
no agreeable impression on Beauclerc: at first he stood quite silent,
and when she asked what he thought, he said--“It’s all very fine, very
clever.”
“But it is all true,” said Helen, “And I admire Mr. Churchill’s knowing
the truth so well and telling it so candidly.”
“Every thing Mr. Churchill has said may be true--and yet I think the
truth is not in him.”
“You are not usually so suspicious,” said Helen. “If you had heard Mr.
Churchill’s voice and emphasis, and seen his look and manner at the
time, I think you could not have doubted him.”
The more eager she grew, the colder Mr. Beauclerc became. “Look and
manner, and voice and emphasis,” said he, “make a great impression, I
know, on ladies.”
“But what is your reason, Mr. Beauclerc, for disbelief? I have as yet
only heard that you believe every thing that Mr. Churchill said was
true, and yet that you do not believe in his truth,” said Helen, in a
tone of raillery.
And many a time before had Beauclerc been the first to laugh when one
of his own paradoxes stared him in the face; but now he was more out of
countenance than amused, and he looked seriously about for reasons to
reconcile his seeming self-contradiction.
“In the first place, all those allusions and those metaphorical
expressions, which you have so wonderfully well remembered, and which no
doubt were worth remembering, all those do not give me the idea of a man
who was really feeling in earnest, and speaking the plain truth about
faults, for which, if he felt at all, he must be too much ashamed to
talk in such a grand style; and to talk of them at all, except to most
intimate friends, seems so unnatural, and quite out of character in a
man who had expressed such horror of egotists, and who is so excessively
circumspect in general.”
“Yes, but Mr. Churchill’s forgetting all his little habits of
circumspection, and all fear of ridicule, is the best proof of his being
quite in earnest--that all he said was from his heart.”
“I doubt whether he has any heart,” said Beauclerc.
“Poor man, he said----” Helen began, and then recollecting the
words, ‘or I would make the offer,’ she stopped short, afraid of
the construction they might bear, and then, ashamed of her fear, she
coloured deeply.
“Poor man, he said----” repeated Beauclerc, fixing his eyes upon her,
“What did he say, may I ask?”
“No,--” said Helen, “I am not sure that I distinctly heard or understood
Mr. Churchill.”
“Oh, if there was any mystery!” Beauclerc begged pardon.
And he went away very quickly. He did not touch upon the subject again,
but Helen saw that he never forgot it; and, by few words which she heard
him say to Lady Davenant about his dislike to half-confidences, she knew
he was displeased, and she thought he was wrong. She began to fear that
his mistrust of Churchill arose from envy at his superior success in
society; and, though she was anxious to preserve her newly-acquired good
opinion of Churchill’s candour, she did not like to lose her esteem for
Beauclerc’s generosity. Was it possible that he could be seriously hurt
at the readiness with which Mr. Churchill availed himself of any idea
which Beauclerc threw out, and which he dressed up, and passed as his
own? Perhaps this might be what he meant by “the truth is not in him.”
She remembered one day when she sat between him and Beauclerc, and when
he did not seem to pay the least attention to what Mr. Beauclerc was
saying to her, yet fully occupied as he had apparently been in talking
for the company in general, he had through all heard Granville telling
the Chinese fable of the “Man in the Moon, whose business it is to knit
together with an invisible silken cord those who are predestined for
each other.” Presently, before the dessert was over, Helen found the
“Chinese Man in the Moon,” whom she thought she had all to herself,
figuring at the other end of the table, and received with great
applause. And was it possible that Beauclerc, with his abundant springs
of genius, could grudge a drop thus stolen from him? but without any
envy in the case, he was right in considering such theft, however petty,
as a theft, and right in despising the meanness of the thief. Such
meanness was strangely incompatible with Mr. Churchill’s frank
confession of his own faults. Could that confession be only for effect?
Her admiration had been sometimes excited by a particular happiness of
thought, beauty of expression, or melody of language in Mr. Churchill’s
conversation. Once Beauclerc had been speaking with enthusiasm of modern
Greece, and his hopes that she might recover her ancient character;
and Mr. Churchill, as if admiring the enthusiasm, yet tempering it with
better judgment, smiled, paused, and answered.
“But Greece is a dangerous field for a political speculator; the
imagination produces an illusion resembling the beautiful appearances
which are sometimes exhibited in the Sicilian straits; the reflected
images of ancient Grecian glory pass in a rapid succession before the
mental eye; and, delighted with the captivating forms of greatness and
splendour, we forget for a moment that the scene is in reality a naked
waste.”
Some people say they can distinguish between a written and a spoken
style, but this depends a good deal on the art of the speaker. Churchill
could give a colloquial tone to a ready-written sentence, and could
speak it with an off-hand grace, a carelessness which defied
all suspicion of preparation; and the look, and pause, and
precipitation--each and all came in aid of the actor’s power of
perfecting the illusion. If you had heard and seen him, you would
have believed that, in speaking this passage, the thought of the _Fata
Morgana_ rose in his mind at the instant, and that, seeing it
pleased you, and pleased with it himself, encouraged by your look
of intelligence, and borne along by your sympathy, the eloquent man
followed his own idea with a happiness more than care, admirable in
conversation. A few days afterwards, Helen was very much surprised
to find her admired sentence word for word in a book, from which
Churchill’s card fell as she opened it.
Persons without a name Horace treated as barbarians who did not know
the value of their gold; and he seemed to think that, if they chanced
to possess rings and jewels, they might be plucked from them without
remorse, and converted to better use by some lucky civilised adventurer.
Yet in his most successful piracies he was always haunted by the fear
of discovery, and he especially dreaded the acute perception of Lady
Davenant; he thought she suspected his arts of appropriation, and he
took the first convenient opportunity of sounding her opinion on this
point.
“How I enjoy,” said he to Lady Cecilia “telling a good story to you, for
you never ask if it is a fact. Now, in a good story, no one sticks to
absolute fact; there must be some little embellishment. No one would
send his own or his friend’s story into the world without ‘putting a hat
on its head, and a stick into its hand,’” Churchill triumphantly quoted;
this time he did not steal.
“But,” said Lady Davenant, “I find that even the pleasure I have in mere
characteristic or humorous narration is heightened by my dependence on
the truth--the character for truth--of the narrator.”
Not only Horace Churchill, but almost every body present, except Helen,
confessed that they could not agree with her. The character for truth
of the story-teller had nothing to do with his story, unless it was
_historique_, or that he was to swear to it.
“And even if it were _historique_,” cried Horace, buoyed up at the
moment by the tide in his favour, and floating out farther than was
prudent--“and even if it were _historique_, how much pleasanter is
graceful fiction than grim, rigid truth; and how much more amusing in my
humble opinion!”
“Now,” said Lady Davenant, “for instance, this book I am reading--(it
was Dumont’s ‘Mémoires de Mirabeau’)--this book which I am reading,
gives me infinitely increased pleasure, from my certain knowledge, my
perfect conviction of the truth of the author. The self-evident nature
of some of the facts would support themselves, you may say, in some
instances; but my perceiving the scrupulous care he takes to say no
more than what he knows to be true, my perfect reliance on the relater’s
private character for integrity, gives a zest to every anecdote
he tells--a specific weight to every word of conversation which
he repeats--appropriate value to every trait of wit or humour
characteristic of the person he describes. Without such belief, the
characters would not have to me, as they now have, all the power, and
charm, and life, of nature and reality. They are all now valuable as
records of individual varieties that have positively so existed. While
the most brilliant writer could, by fiction, have produced an effect,
valuable only as representing the general average of human nature, but
adding nothing to our positive knowledge, to the data from which we can
reason in future.”
Churchill understood Lady Davenant too well to stand quite unembarrassed
as he listened; and when she went on to say how differently she should
have felt in reading these memoirs if they had been written by Mirabeau
himself; with all his brilliancy, all his talents, how inferior would
have been her enjoyment as well as instruction! his shrinking conscience
told him how this might all be applied to himself; yet, strange to say,
though somewhat abashed, he was nevertheless flattered by the idea of
a parallel between himself and Mirabeau. To _Mirabeauder_ was no easy
task; it was a certain road to notoriety, if not to honest fame.
But even in the better parts of his character, his liberality in money
matters, his good-natured patronage of rising genius, the meanness
of his mind broke out. There was a certain young poetess whom he had
encouraged; she happened to be sister to Mr. Mapletofft, Lord Davenant’s
secretary, and she had spoken with enthusiastic gratitude of Mr.
Churchill’s kindness. She was going to publish a volume of Sonnets
under Mr. Churchill’s patronage, and, as she happened to be now at some
country town in the neighbourhood, he requested Lady Cecilia to allow
him to introduce this young authoress to her. She was invited for a
few days to Clarendon Park, and Mr. Churchill was zealous to procure
subscriptions for her, and eager to lend the aid of his fashion and his
literary reputation to bring forward the merits of her book. “Indeed,”
he whispered, “he had given her some little help in the composition,”
and all went well till, in an evil hour, Helen praised one of the
sonnets rather too much--more, he thought, than she had praised another,
which was his own. His jealousy wakened--he began to criticise his
protegée’s poetry. Helen defended her admiration, and reminded him that
he had himself recommended these lines to her notice.
“Well!--yes--I did say the best I could for the whole thing, and for her
it is surprising--that is, I am anxious the publication should take. But
if we come to compare--you know this cannot stand certain comparisons
that might be made. Miss Stanley’s own taste and judgment must
perceive--when we talk of genius--that is quite out of the question, you
know.”
Horace was so perplexed between his philanthropy and his jealousy, his
desire to show the one and his incapability of concealing the other,
that he became unintelligible; and Helen laughed, and told him that
she could not now understand what his opinion really was. She was quite
ready to agree with him, she said, if he would but agree with himself:
this made him disagree still more with himself and unluckily with his
better self, his benevolence quite gave way before his jealousy and
ill-humour, and he vented it upon the book; and, instead of prophecies
of its success, he now groaned over “sad careless lines,”--“passages
that lead to nothing,”--“similes that will not hold when you come to
examine them.”
Helen pointed out in the dedication a pretty, a happy thought.
Horace smiled, and confessed that was his own.
What! in the dedication to himself?--and in the blindness of his vanity
he did not immediately see the absurdity.
The more he felt himself in the wrong, of course the more angry he grew,
and it finished by his renouncing the dedication altogether, declaring
he would have none of it. The book and the lady might find a better
patron. There are things which no man of real generosity could say or
do, or think, put him in ever so great a passion. He would not be
harsh to an inferior--a woman--a protegée on whom he had conferred
obligations; but Mr. Churchill was harsh--he showed neither generosity
nor feeling; and Helen’s good opinion of him sank to rise no more.
Of this, however, he had not enough of the sympathy or penetration of
feeling to be aware.