The Pilgrim Hawk Read online

  There had been no mention of their coming, or perhaps I had forgotten it. I heard the doorbell ring, then ring again. Jean and Eva must have been outdoors or napping. Alex had put through a telephone call to London upon some little annoying matter of business, and wished not to be disturbed. So I went to the door; and there was the long dark Daimler entirely occupying the cobbled space between the house and the highway, and there stood the Irishman about to ring a third time. “Oh, how d’ya do, is this Miss Henry’s house, my name’s Cullen,” he said; and turned to help Mrs. Cullen out of the car, which was a delicate operation, for she bore a full-grown hooded falcon on her wrist. A dapper young chauffeur also helped. She was dressed with extreme elegance and she wore the highest heels I ever saw, on which, with one solicitous male at each elbow, she stumbled across the ancient cobblestones, the bird swaying a little and hunching its wings to steady itself.

  I told them my name, and they repeated it after me and shook hands with a somewhat grand and vague affability. “I brought my hawk,” Mrs. Cullen unnecessarily announced. “She’s new. I thought Alex wouldn’t mind. And I hope you too,” she added and paused a moment, with bright eyes to flatter me just in case I felt entitled to authority of some sort in Alex’s house, “I hope you won’t mind.” She had no way of knowing who or what I was: casual caller or one of Alex’s kinsmen or perhaps a sweetheart.

  Her eyes were a crystal blue, unmistakably Irish; and she was unmistakable in other ways too, in spite of her brisk London voice and fine French dress. Her make-up was better than you would have expected of a lady falconer; still you could see that her skin was naturally downy and her snub nose tended to be pink. There was also a crookedness, particularly in the alignment of her nostrils and her voluble little lips. How rare pulchritude is among the Irish, I said to myself; therefore what a trouble is made when it does appear: Emer and Deirdre, Mrs. O’Shea and Mrs. McBride. Then my glance fell upon Mrs. Cullen’s snowy dimpled fingers, with a considerable diamond on one, a star sapphire on another. Between her sleeve and the rough gauntlet to which the falcon clung, her wrist showed like a bit of Easter lily; and her ankle was a match for it, perfectly straight in a mere glimmer of stocking. No doubt these fine points were enough to entitle her to a certain enchantment and disturbance of the opposite sex: her husband for one.

  Meanwhile Jean had come running in a fine embarrassment, buttoning his white jacket; and I sent him to inform his mistress of the arrival of her guests and to guide their chauffeur to the garage, while I tried to usher them into the living room. But Mrs. Cullen went on explaining the hawk. “Her name’s Lucy. Don’t you think she’s sweet? She’s Scottish; I’ve only had her five or six weeks. A gamekeeper near Inverness trapped her, but she’s all right, only one toe bent in the trap. D’you see, this toe?” She paused on the threshold and held up the gloved hand and wrist on which Lucy perched, and I saw: gripping the rugged and stained leather, one sharp talon that did not grip straight. The stain on the leather was dried blood.

  “I call her Lucy because my old father used to make me read Scott to him in the winter whenever the weather got too beastly to hunt. I thought Alex would like to see her.”

  “We had to bring her anyway,” her husband loudly chimed in. “The most awful things happen if we leave her in the hotel. She frightens the chambermaids, and they scream and weep. I have to give immense tips.”

  He was a large man, not really fat but with bulk and softness irregularly here and there, not so much in the middle as up and down his back, all around his head, in his hands. His British complexion suggested eating and drinking rather than hunting and shooting; certainly nothing about him suggested hawking. His hazel eyes were a little bloodshot, wavering golden now and then; and he had a way of opening and shutting his lips, like an unsympathetic pout, or a dispirited kiss, under the tufts of his mustache.

  We were about to sit down in the living room when they both noticed it, and evidently felt obliged to comment. “What a splendid room, splendid,” they said; “most unusual and modern and comfortable.” It was not splendid, but it was very large: the entire former stable with the hayloft removed so that the roof constituted the ceiling, with old chestnut rafters gothically pointing up twenty-five or thirty feet; the woodwork darkly waxed and the walls painted white. It reminded me of a village church. At regular intervals all around hung certain modern pictures with only blunt rudimentary drawing and overflowing color, like stained glass. But on as fine a day as this, modern art was dimmed and dwarfed by the view of the garden and the park beyond it, Alex’s architect having removed almost a third of the wall on that side and put in two great panes of plate glass.

  Mrs. Cullen tripped over to this great window and courteously exclaimed once more: “Splendid garden. What luck to have a pond!” It was what the French call an English garden; no formal flower beds—a few blossoms amid the grass, paths along the water, and shrubs flourishing, in the muffled brilliance of late May. The characteristic Seine-et-Oise sky, foamy cloud and weak blue, lay at our feet also, daubed in a soft copy on the surface of the pond. In the background every tree was draped in a slightly different shade of the same ecstatic color.

  But as Mrs. Cullen stood facing all this, I had an impression of indifference and mere courtesy; her look did not take in much. A little narrow frown, an efficient survey, only to discover if there was anything in it for her personally; and there was not. In a moment the light eyelashes began to flutter again, and the blue pupils loosened, merely sparkling. Her prolonged and expressive looks were all for her husband or her hawk.

  Now, what seeing the garden chiefly reminded her of was that the hawk could not see: its entire head except the beak encased in its plumed Dutch hood. “Poor Lucy, blind as a bat,” she murmured; and very deftly, taking one drawstring in her teeth and the other between thumb and forefinger of her right hand, she unhooded it. It also frowned, and stared circularly at the room and blinked at the window. Then it opened out and rearranged the whitish and bluish feathers around its throat; combed its head between its tethered legs; smoothed its cheek against its powerful shoulder.

  Mrs. Cullen paced up and down, evidently trying to decide which armchair would suit her and Lucy best. Then Alex came in from her long-distance business, with apologies for not welcoming them at once. They replied with another round of compliments upon the house and garden, and there was a new introduction of the falcon. “Lucy, for Lucy Ashton, Lucy of Lammermoor,” Mrs. Cullen explained. “Don’t you remember her song? Easy live and quiet die, Vacant hand and heart and eye.”

  To my amusement Cullen hummed a few notes of the Mad Scene from Lucia in a manly Irish treble. His wife hushed him by murmuring his name, which was Larry; and went on informing Alex that they were at the Plaza-Honoré, busy shopping in Paris, eager to leave for Hungary via Strasbourg on the morrow. I was impatient for them to cease this small talk and be seated, because I wanted to sit down and admire the falcon comfortably, and to ask certain questions. At last Mrs. Cullen requested a straight chair, which I brought from the dining room.

  I was much impressed by Alex’s enthusiasm during this first part of the Cullens’ visit. It reminded me that she must be lonely here in France with only myself and my cousin and a few other friends rather like us. She had spent a number of years in Scotland with her father, and in Morocco, and journeying around the Orient; and in London also the acquaintances of her girlhood had been outdoor people like these two, self-centered but without any introspection, strenuous but emotionally idle. It was a type of humanity that she no longer quite respected or trusted, but evidently still enjoyed.

  Their enthusiasm about themselves and all that exactly appertained to them, always overflowing, coolly playing and bubbling over in mild agitation like a fountain, held your attention and mirrored itself in your mind; little by little you began to bubble with it. One of Alex’s obvious characteristics was lack of curiosity; and I think that was chiefly fear of arousing or authorizing others’ inquiry about herself. P
erhaps selfishness reassured her and made her less shy. In any case, that afternoon she eagerly asked questions, including some that I had in mind; and Mrs. Cullen was charmed to answer; and Cullen was charmed to listen and give back his approximate echoes. Thus an odd kind of compatibility was established, in which I too gradually let myself be included, somewhat to my surprise.

  For one thing, the bird charmed me so that nothing else mattered much. And it served as an embodiment or emblem for me of all the truly interesting subjects of conversation that these very sociable, traveling, sporting people leave out as a rule: illness, poverty, sex, religion, art. Whenever I began to be bored, a solemn glance of its maniacal eyes helped me to stop listening and to think concentratedly of myself instead, or for myself.

  Furthermore the Cullens began to puzzle me, to charm me in that sense. Whether or not I finally arrive at a proper understanding of people, I often begin in the way of a vexed, intense superficiality. And indeed they were mere male and female of that species of well-to-do British which haunts the entire world with excess of energy and sedate manner. They were self-absorbed, coldly gregarious, mere passers of time. But nothing about them was authentically sedate or even peaceful. There Cullen plumply sat in Alex’s softest armchair, his legs more widely spread or loosely crossed than you would expect of a conventional gentleman; licking his lips under his fringy mustache; evidently thinking of his dinner; interrupting his wife’s conversation at regular intervals as if that were his life work. Yet he seemed to be constantly fighting against some strange feeling, and to be somehow outwitted by it. Whenever he spoke, his wife smiled or at least tilted her head toward him. This, I felt, was chiefly good breeding on her part; many of his remarks, and especially his tone of voice, seemed unpleasant. But between remarks, in her glances at him, there was affection as bright as tears. And during the loving fuss she made over the great bird on her arm, she kept shifting her eyes in his direction, imploring him to try to like it too. It might have been a baby, and he a lover; or was it the other way around?

  Alex expressed surprise that they should willingly leave Ireland at this lovely time of year. Mrs. Cullen answered that, in season or out, there was nothing much to do in Ireland except hunt. “And our terrible sons pinch our hunters when they come home. We can’t afford to keep enough for them. I can’t bear a horse that others have been riding.”

  She also alluded mildly to the diminishment of the old quiet kind of fortune like theirs. The banshee in the drafty corridor or the weedy hedge crying not the deaths of relatives but increase of taxes, decrease of rents and investments... Indeed they still appeared rich, in hand-woven silk with diamonds, in tweed as soft as silk, stopping at the Plaza-Honoré, en route to Budapest in a Daimler. But all that in fact is cheaper than an old country house full of guests, and the requisite stable and kennel and larder and cellar, and servants enough. Having closed Cullen Hall, Mrs. Cullen pointed out, they were in a position to accept invitations half the year; and the continent was cheap.

  Evidently her telling us this vexed Cullen. He warmly informed us that one of his neighbors, a drunken idiot anyway, had sold everything that the entail permitted, and two of his cousins were obliged to rent; and so it went all over the British Isles. Their own circumstances were neither discreditable nor hopeless. There were still certain inheritances due them, on his side, not Mrs. Cullen’s. His sons might be considered grown men, except by their mother; but they were still engaged in that great postponement, education, which is expensive. His brother and sister were happy to have them during their long vacations; but as a rule they preferred to loiter at Cullen Hall with two or three servants who were too old to dismiss anyway; and they hunted with the neighbors. It is easy for youngsters to get on with new people, even such as the latest in their county, a manufacturing peer named Bild, a Jew; not at all easy for him.

  Mrs. Cullen said a word in defense of Lord Bild. Thank heaven it was he who had bought the estate adjoining Cullen Hall, on their youngsters’ account especially. Although of common Germanic origin he was very strict about manners and sportsmanship and keeping fit; more so than they were. Neighborly influence is like education; the best teachers belong to the races and classes which have been learning themselves just lately.

  Now Cullen had risen and was standing at his wife’s elbow, shaking his finger at the falcon teasingly. I thought that the bird’s great eyes showed only a slight natural bewilderment; whereas a slow sneer came over his face and he turned pale. It was the first revelation I had of the interesting fact that he hated Lucy. He would willingly have sacrificed a finger tip in order to have an excuse to retaliate, I thought; and I imagined him picking up a chair or a coffee table and going at her with smashing blows. What a difference there is between animals and humans! Lucy no doubt would be disgustingly fierce when her time came; but meanwhile sat pleasantly and idly, in abeyance. Whereas humanity is histrionic, and must prepare and practice every stroke of passion; so half our life is vague and stormy make-believe.

  Mrs. Cullen merely looked up at her husband and said in a velvety tone, “The trouble with Ireland, from my point of view, is that they don’t like our having a falcon. Naturally Lord Bild disapproves; but I don’t mind him. He’s so unsure of himself; he’s a Jew furthermore; you can scarcely expect him to live and let live. But our other neighbors and the family are almost as tiresome.”

  Cullen thrust the teasing hand in his pocket and returned to his armchair. Her eyes sparkled fast, perhaps with that form of contrition which pretends to be joking. Or perhaps it pleased her to break off the subject of their Irish circumstances and worldly situation and to resume the dear theme of hawk, which meant all the world to her.

  The summer before, she told us, an old Hungarian had sold her a trained tiercel. “I took him with me last winter when we stayed with some pleasant Americans in Scotland. There’s a bad ailment called croaks, and he caught that and died. They had installed their American heating, which I think makes an old house damp; don’t you? Then their gamekeeper trapped Lucy and gave her to me. Wasn’t that lucky? I’ve always wanted a real falcon, a haggard, to man and train myself.”

  In strict terminology of the sport, she explained, only a female is called a falcon; and a haggard is one that has already hunted on her own account, that is, at least a year old when caught.

  Except for that one deformed bit of one foot, Lucy was a perfect example of her species, Falco peregrinus, pilgrim hawk. Her body was as long as her mistress’s arm; the wing feathers in repose a little too long, slung across her back like a folded tent. Her back was an indefinable hue of iron; only a slight patine of the ruddiness of youth still shone on it. Her luxurious breast was white, with little tabs or tassels of chestnut. Out of tasseled pantaloons her legs came down straight to the perch with no apparent flesh on them, enameled a greenish yellow.

  But her chief beauty was that of expression. It was like a little flame; it caught and compelled your attention like that, although it did not flicker and there was nothing bright about it nor any warmth in it. It is a look that men sometimes have; men of great energy, whose appetite or vocation has kept them absorbed every instant all their lives. They may be good men but they are often mistaken for evil men, and vice versa. In Lucy’s case it appeared chiefly in her eyes, not black but funereally brown, and extravagantly large, set deep in her flattened head.

  On each side of the upper beak there was a little tooth or tusk. Mrs. Cullen explained that the able bird in the prime of life uses this to snap the spinal cord of its quarry, which is the most merciful death in nature. It reminded me of the hooked gloves which our farmers wear to husk corn; and so in fact, I thought, it must work: the falcon in the sky like a large angelic hand, stripping the meat of pigeon or partridge out of its feathers, the soul out of its throat.

  I think Mrs. Cullen was the most talkative woman I ever met; and it was hawk, hawk, all afternoon. A good many inhabitants of the British Isles are hell-bent all their lives upon killing some wild anim
al somehow, and naturally are keen about the domestic animals which assist them. Others, who know all about human nature, nevertheless prefer to converse about animals, perhaps because it is the better part of conversational valor. Mrs. Cullen’s enthusiasm was nothing like that, and it probably would have annoyed or alarmed the majority of her compatriots. As it seemed to me after listening awhile, she felt welling up in her mind some peculiar imagination, or some trouble impossible to ignore, which she tried to relieve by talking, with a kind of continuous double meaning. I think she would never have admitted the duplicity, and perhaps could not have expressed herself in plain terms. People as a rule do mean much more than they understand.

  She informed us, for example, that in a state of nature hawks rarely die of disease; they starve to death. Their eyesight fails; some of their flight feathers break off or fall out; and their talons get dull or broken. They cease to be able to judge what quarry is worth flying at; or their flight slows up so that even the likely quarry gets away. Or, because they have lost weight, the victim is not stunned by their swooping down on it. Or when they have clutched it, they cannot hang on long enough to kill. Day after day they make fools of themselves. Then they have to depend upon very young birds or sick birds, or little animals on the ground, which are the hardest of all to see; and in any case there are not enough of these easy conquests to keep them in flesh. The hungrier they get, the more wearily and weakly they hunt. And the weaker they get, the more often they go hungry, in a miserable confusion of cause and effect. Finally what appears to be shame and morbid discouragement overcomes them. They simply sit on the rocks or in a tree somewhere waiting to die, as you might say philosophically, letting themselves die.