University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
THE RAKING HAWK.

I said that when we arrived at the Brakes, Bel
and Harvey Riggs were seen approaching the house
from a distance. The morning was still cool from
the evaporation of the dew before the rays of the
sun. A pleasant breeze swept across the lawn from
the direction of the river. Bel was leaning upon
Harvey's arm in earnest conversation; her face
shaded by a kind of hood of green silk, and her dress
such as ladies wear in the earlier part of the day, before
they perform the more studied labours of the toilet;
it was of a light fabric, neatly fitted to her person.
Exercise had thrown a healthy hue over her
cheek; and the fresh breeze fluttering amongst the
folds of her dress imparted an idea of personal comfort
that accorded with the coolness of the costume,
and the blooming countenance of its wearer. It did
not escape my notice, that her foot, which is exceedingly
well shaped, appeared to great advantage in
an accurately fitted shoe, bound to her ankle with
black ribbons laced across stockings of spotless
white. Her exterior was altogether remarkable for
a becoming simplicity of attire, and seemed to speak

that purity of taste which is the most beautiful and
attractive quality in the character of a woman.

I must admonish my reader that, as my design in
this work has been simply to paint in true colours
the scenes of domestic life as I have found them in
Virginia, I do not scruple to record whatever has interested
me; and if, perchance, my story should not
advance according to the regular rules of historico-dramatic
composition to its proper conclusion, I do
not hold myself accountable for any misadventure
on that score. I sketch with a careless hand;
and must leave the interest I excite—if such a
thing may be—to the due developement of the facts
as they come within my knowledge. For the present,
I have to tell what Harvey Riggs and Bel had
been concerning themselves about, before we met
them in the hall. If any thing is to grow out of it
hereafter, it is more than I know.

It had been hinted to me from two or three quarters,
but principally by Ned Hazard, and I believe
I have said as much to my reader in some former
chapter, that Bel Tracy is a little given to certain
romantic fancies, such as country ladies who want
excitement and read novels are apt to engender.
Her vivacity and spirit show themselves in the zeal
with which she ever cultivates the freaks that take
possession of her mind. For some time past, she
had devoted her time to training a beautiful marsh-hawk,
a bird resembling the short-winged hawk
known by the name of the hen-harrier in the old
books, and had nurtured it with her own hand from

its callow state. By an intimacy of one year she
had rendered this bird so docile, that, at her summons,
he would leave a larger wicker cage in which
he was ordinarily imprisoned, and which was suspended
from an old mulberry-tree in the yard, to
perch upon her wrist. The picturesque association
of falconry with the stories of an age that Walter
Scott has rendered so bewitching to the fancy of
meditative maidens, had inspired Bel with an especial
ardour in the attempt to reclaim her bird. In
her pursuit of this object she had picked up some
gleanings of the ancient lore that belonged to the
art; and, fantastic as it may seem, began to think
that her unskilful efforts would be attended with success.
Her hawk, it is true, had not been taught to
follow his quarry, but he was manned—as Bel said of
him—in all such exercises as made him a fit companion
for a lady. She had provided him with
leather bewets, that buttoned round his legs, and to
each of these was attached a small silver bell. A silver
ring, or varvel, was fitted to one leg, and on it
was engraved the name of her favourite, copied from
some old tale, “Fairbourne,” with the legend attached,
“I live in my lady's grace.” I know not what
other foppery was expended upon her minion; but I
will warrant he went forth in as conceited array as
his “lady's grace” could devise for him. A lady's
favourite is not apt to want gauds and jewels.

Immediately after breakfast, Bel stole forth alone
to Fairbourne's perch. She held in her hand a pair
of leather jesses, a leash, and a ball of fine cord,

which she termed a creance. Now, the thought
that had taken possession of her brain was, to slip off
with Fairbourne into the field, and give him a flight;
a privilege that he had never enjoyed during the
whole period of his thraldom. Bel supposed that by
fastening the jesses to his legs,—or I should say,
speaking like one versed in the mystery, his arms,—
and the leash to the jesses, and the creance to that,
Fairbourne would be as secure in the empyrean as
on his perch: she had only to manage him as a boy
manages his kite. Her purpose, however, was to
try the first experiment alone, and, upon its success,
she designed to surprise her visiters, as well as the
family, with the rare entertainment of a hawking
scene.

As she stood under the mulberry-tree, looking at
Fairbourne tiring at the limb of a pullet, or, in other
words, whetting his voracious appetite with the raw
leg of a chicken, and had just snatched the morsel
from his beak to make him the more keen, Harvey
Riggs accidentally came into the porch, and, stooping
down, picked up from the floor a strange resemblance
of a bird compacted of leather and feathers.

“What child's toy is this, Bel?” cried he, loud
enough to startle the lady with the question. “What
crotchet have you in your head now?”

“Pray, cousin Harvey, come this way,” said she,
turning round with the hawk upon her hand. “It is
my lure; bring it to me, for I want your help. I am
going to give Fairbourne a holiday. You shall see
him presently dabbling his wing in yonder cloud.”

Harvey approached with the lure in his hand;
and Bel, patting the bird upon the back, as he alternately
stretched out first one wing, and then the
other, along his leg,—in the action know by the name
of mantling,—explained her whole design to her
cousin. Then binding on the jesses, with the leash
and creance, each made fast to the other, she sallied
out upon the lawn, attended by her squire, until she
reached a spot at a distance from any tree, where
she intimated to Harvey that she would now let
Fairbourne fly.

“But if he should not come back, Bel?” inquired
Harvey. “For it seems to me not altogether so
safe to trust to his love of his perch, or even of his
mistress; although in that he is not of my mind. In
spite of your lure, which I know is a great temptation
to some persons, my pretty cousin, there are
creatures that prefer the open world to your hand,
strange as it may seem!”

“Is not here my creance?” asked Bel, in reply.
“And then, when the lure fails, have I not only to
pull the string?”

“Your light flax is not so strong as a wild
bird's love of freedom,” said Harvey.

“Ah, cousin, you forget that Fairbourne is a gallant
bird, and loves to hear me call him. I will
whistle him down without compulsion. Now, mark
how loth he is to leave my hand,” continued Bel,
rapidly endeavouring to cast the bird off, who, instead
of flying, merely spread his wings with a motion
necessary to preserve his balance. At length,

she succeeded in disengaging him from her hand,
when, instead of mounting into the air, he tamely lit
upon the ground some few paces from her feet.

“Oh villain Fairbourne!” cried Harvey, “you
grovel when you should soar.”

“This comes of my not hooding him,” said Bel.
“But it seemed so cruel to pass a thread through
his eyelids,—which is called seeling, and must be
done before he would bear the hood,—that I could
not think of it. I don't believe these ladies of the
old time could have been so very tender-hearted.
Cousin, if he will not fly, the direction is to strike at
him with your wand.”

“Which means my foot,” said Harvey, “so,
master Fairbourne, up, or my wand shall ruffle
your feathers for you!” With these words, Harvey
approached the bird, and, striking at him with his
boot, had the satisfaction to see him spring briskly
from the ground, and mount into the air with a rapid,
bickering flight. He took his course against the
wind, and, as he ascended, Bel played out her line,
with rapturous exclamations of pleasure at the sight
of her petted bird flinging himself aloft with such a
spirited motion. When he had risen to the utmost
reach of his creance, he was observed to dart and
wheel through the air in every variety of perplexed
motion, canceliering—as it was anciently termed—
in graceful circles through the atmosphere, and turning,
with quick flashes, the bright lining of his wings
to the sun. It was beautiful to look upon the joyous
bird gambolling at this lordly height, and the

graceful girl watching his motions with a countenance
of perfect transport.

“To my thinking,” said Harvey, “Fairbourne is
so well pleased with his pastime that he will not be
very willing to return.”

“Oh, you shall see!” cried Bel; “I can lure `my
tassel-gentle back again.' Look you now, cousin,
here is Fairbourne shall come back to me like a
spaniel!”

Saying this, she flourished her lure in the air, and
called out the words of her customary salutation to
the hawk as loud as she was able. “He sees and
hears with extraordinary acuteness,” she continued,
as she still waved the lure above her head, “and
will obey presently.”

“Faith, if he hears or sees, he does not heed!”
said Harvey.

“He has been so overfed with delicacies,” replied
Bel, a little disappointed at receiving no token
of recognition, “that it is no wonder this lure has no
charms for him. My whistle he never neglects.”

Upon this, she put a small ivory pipe to her mouth,
and blew a shrill note.

“You overrate your authority, Bel,” said her cousin.
“Fairbourne has no ear for music. He is fit for
treason, stratagem and spoils.”

“The wretch!” exclaimed Bel, playfully. “Does
he dare defy my whistle! then, master, I must need
take a course with you! there is some virtue in fetters,
however, when milder means fail. So come
down, scapegrace, and answer to your mistress for

your truant behaviour! Aha! you obey now!” she
added exultingly, as she drew in the line, and compelled
her hawk to dart towards the earth.

“After all,” said Harvey, “there is no persuasion
like a string. Trust me, a loop upon hawk or lover,
coz, is safer than a lure any day.”

“It did not require the flight of a silly bird to teach
me that,” said Bel, smiling, “or why did I bring this
long line into the field with me?”

At this moment, Fairbourne had almost reached
the ground by a swift flight that far outsped Bel's exertions,
assisted by Harvey, to draw him down: then,
skimming along the surface of the field with the
slackened cord, he suddenly shot upwards with such
vigour as to snap the string; and, frightened by the
jerk that severed his fetters, he arose with an alarmed
motion, to a soaring height, and then shaped his
career directly up the river.

Bel and Harvey watched the retreating bird in
equal amazement, as he winged his flight across the
woody promontories in the distance, until he was reduced
to a mere speck upon the sky.

Bel's emotion was one of mortification, not unmingled
with admiration at the arrow-like swiftness with
which her favourite sped from her hand. Harvey's
was wonder, whether a bird nurtured in such household
familiarity would soar so far from his accustomed
haunts as to render his return hopeless.

“I can see him yet,” said Harvey, straining his
sight up the river, “and, if I am not mistaken, he has
darted down to perch near Swallow Barn.”

“He will come back,” muttered Bel, in a distrusting
tone of voice, and with a look of dejection, “I
know he will come back! nothing that I have tended
so kindly would desert me.”

“Make yourself easy, my dear cousin,” replied
Harvey, “he belongs to an ungrateful tribe, and is
not worth reclaiming.”

“I could sit down and cry,” said Bel.

“You should laugh rather, to think,” replied her
cousin, “what an arrant coxcomb you have sent
abroad amongst the crows and king-fishers of the
river. He, with his jangling bells, and his silver ring
and dainty apparel! A marvellous fopling he will
make in the sedate circles of owls and buzzards!
I should not be surprised if, in three days' time, he
should be whipped out of all good society in the
woods, and be fain to come back to his perch, as
torn-down and bedraggled as a certain other favourite
of yours, who took refuge at the Brakes yesterday.”

“Fye, cousin!” exclaimed Bel, laughing, “what
harm has poor Mr. Swansdown done, that you
should rail at him?”

“True,” said Harvey; “if you had deigned to cast
a loop round him, he would not have fled so willingly.”

“What shall I do?” asked Bel.

“I will tell Ned Hazard,” said Harvey. “This
is an incident in his line. Ned has not yet killed
seven dragons in your service; and therefore you
frown upon him. So, pray let me put him in the

way to signalize himself. He shall bring back Fairbourne,
if the renegade is to be found in the Old Dominion.”

“I would not give him the trouble,” said Bel,
carelessly.

“I will,” replied Harvey; “and by way of quickening
his motion, will tell him that you would take
it kindly.”

“I am sure,” said Bel, “Edward would do any
thing I might ask of him.”

“He would delight in it,” replied Harvey. “He is
most horribly in love. The search after this hawk
would be occupation for him: it would divert his
melancholy.”

“Oh, cousin Harvey Riggs!” cried Bel with great
animation, “to say that Ned Hazard is melancholy,
or in love either, after what we heard on the bank of
the river the other day, when we surprised him and
Mr. Littleton!”

“Melancholy,—that is, your love-melancholy,—
wears divers antics,” said Harvey. “Ned was beguiling
his sorrows in music, which is very common, as
you will find, in all the old romances. It was one of
the excesses of his passion, Bel.”

“To be singing my name in doggerel couplets on
the highway! I assure you I don't forgive him for
such passion!” interrupted the other.

“If the gods have not made him poetical,” replied
Harvey, “you should not blame him for that.”

“Talk to me of my hawk, cousin, and pray spare
your jests; for you see I need comfort.”

“Ned,” said Harvey, “is all the comfort I can
give you, and if he does not bring back Fairbourne,
I would advise you to take the miserable swain himself.”

“Why do you talk to me so?” asked Bel.

“To tell you the truth,” replied Harvey, “I have a
reason for it. Ned, you know, is a good fellow. And
here,—what is very natural,—he has fallen in love.
He could not help that, you know! Well, it makes
him silly, as it makes every man, except those who
are so by nature, and they grow wise upon it. He
is afraid to talk to you, because his heart gets
in his mouth, and chokes him. I can see plainly
enough what he wishes to say, and therefore I am
determined, as you are my cousin, to say it for him.
He wishes to tell you, that as you are inexorable, he
has made up his mind to leave this country with
Mark Littleton; and then, heaven knows where the
poor fellow will go!”

“If no man was ever more in love than Ned Hazard,”
answered Bel, “the world would be sadly in
want of romances. Why, cousin, it is impossible
for him to be in earnest long enough to sum up his
own thoughts upon the subject.”

“How little do you know,” cried Harvey, “of my
poor friend Ned!”

“Know him, cousin!” exclaimed Bel, laughing,
“you won't be so rash as to say Ned Hazard is a
man of mystery? Why he is mirth itself.”

“You mistake his madness for mirth, Bel; he is

distracted, and, therefore, unaccountable for his actions.”

“You are as mad as he, cousin Harvey. That
is a pretty kind of love that plays off such merry-andrew
tricks as Ned's mummery, with you to back
him! Your tragedy of the Babes in the Wood, and
your serenades under our windows, look very much
like the doings of a distracted lover! Give me a man
of reverend manners and dignity for a lover. Now,
you know, Ned has none of that, cousin.”

“Bel, you are as mad as either Ned or myself,”
exclaimed Harvey with a laugh, and taking both of
Bel's hands; “you will marry some grave rogue or
dull pedant, after all!”

“Cousin Harvey, I will not be catechised any
longer,” interrupted Bel impatiently; “here I come
to fly a hawk, and lo, you engage me in a parley
about Ned Hazard!”

“Well,” replied Harvey, “I have discharged my
duty. I see Ned is in a bad way. Poor devil! he
ought never to have fallen in love. But it was not
his fault. I thought it but just to tell you what I
feared. Ned will leave us: and who knows but he
may take another trip round the Horn! He will then
throw himself into the great struggle for freedom in
that hemisphere; become a general, of course; push
his conquests across the Andes; and perhaps, reaching
the heights of Chimborazo, will fall in some
splendid battle, having first engraved with his sword
the name of the cold Bel Tracy upon the ice of the

glacier. And there he will leave that mighty mountain
to tell posterity how burning was his love, how
frozen was his mistress! Now, there's dignity and
superlative sentiment both for you! Let Swansdown
himself beat that if he can!”

“Why what an irreclaimable jester are you!”
cried Bel; “I do not wonder that Edward Hazard
should be so little serious, with such a companion!”

“Then, Bel, you do not like him.”

“On the contrary,” replied Bel, “I like him exceedingly;
as well as a brother. But depend upon
it, I cannot entertain him in any other relation, until
perhaps —”

“He has learned to be more sentimental and scrupulous
in his behaviour,” interrupted her cousin.

“At least,” said Bel, in a more serious manner,
and evidently as if she felt what she said, “until he
ceases to jest upon me.”

“That's in confidence,” said Harvey; “I understand
you. Ned has some schooling to go through
yet. At all events, he must not leave Swallow
Barn.”

“If you are in earnest, cousin,—for indeed I do
not know how to take you,—and he thinks of such a
thing, I should be very sorry for it,” said Bel.

During this conversation, Bel had taken Harvey's
arm, and they had wandered towards the bank of
the river, and from thence homeward, so much engrossed
with the topics that Harvey had brought
into discussion, that Bel gradually forgot her hawk,
and fell into a confidential communion upon a subject

that was nearer to her feelings than she chose to
confess. The particulars of this further discourse,
which was continued until they had reached the
house, after our arrival at the Brakes, was not all
related to me by Harvey; but the impression made
upon his mind was, that Ned Hazard had not taken
the pains to conciliate Bel's favour, which the value
of the prize deserved. He did not doubt that she
had an affection for him; but still, she spoke as if
there were prejudices to be overcome, and scruples
to be conquered, which stood in the way of her decision.
Harvey's object, under all his levity of manner,
was to ascertain whether Ned's quest was hopeless
or otherwise; and he had therefore availed
himself of the adventure of the hawk, to draw her
thoughts into the current indicated in the above conversation.
His conclusion from it all was, that Ned
must either reform his behaviour towards Bel, or relinquish
his pretensions. Harvey added, “Ned is
falling rapidly into that privileged intimacy that is
fatal to the pretensions of a lover. This jesting, careless
friendship will lodge him, in a short time, high
and dry upon a shoal in her regard, where he will
become a permanent and picturesque landmark. He
will acquire the enviable distinction of a brother, as
she begins to call him already, and he will be certain
to be invited to her wedding.”