A CAPTURE
The three youths were standing in the portico when the Countess appeared
among them. She singled out him who was specially obnoxious to her, and
sweetly inquired the direction to the village post. With the renowned
gallantry of his nation, he offered to accompany her, but presently, with
a different exhibition of the same, proposed that they should spare
themselves the trouble by dropping the letter she held prominently, in
the bag.
'Thanks,' murmured the Countess, 'I will go.' Upon which his eager air
subsided, and he fell into an awkward silent march at her side, looking
so like the victim he was to be, that the Countess could have emulated
his power of laughter.
'And you are Mr. Harry Jocelyn, the very famous cricketer?'
He answered, glancing back at his friends, that he was, but did not know
about the 'famous.'
'Oh! but I saw you--I saw you hit the ball most beautifully, and dearly
wished my brother had an equal ability. Brought up in the Court of
Portugal, he is barely English. There they have no manly sports. You
saw him pass you?'
'Him! Who?' asked Harry.
'My brother, on the lawn, this moment. Your sweet sister's friend. Your
uncle Melville's secretary.'
'What's his name?' said Harry, in blunt perplexity.
The Countess repeated his name, which in her pronunciation was
'Hawington,' adding, 'That was my brother. I am his sister. Have you
heard of the Countess de Saldar?'
'Countess!' muttered Harry. 'Dash it! here's a mistake.'
She continued, with elegant fan-like motion of her gloved fingers: 'They
say there is a likeness between us. The dear Queen of Portugal often
remarked it, and in her it was a compliment to me, for she thought my
brother a model! You I should have known from your extreme resemblance
to your lovely young sister.'
Coarse food, but then Harry was a youthful Englishman; and the Countess
dieted the vanity according to the nationality. With good wine to wash
it down, one can swallow anything. The Countess lent him her eyes for
that purpose; eyes that had a liquid glow under the dove--like drooping
lids. It was a principle of hers, pampering our poor sex with swinish
solids or the lightest ambrosia, never to let the accompanying cordial be
other than of the finest quality. She knew that clowns, even more than
aristocrats, are flattered by the inebriation of delicate celestial
liquors.
'Now,' she said, after Harry had gulped as much of the dose as she chose
to administer direct from the founts, 'you must accord me the favour to
tell me all about yourself, for I have heard much of you, Mr. Harry
Jocelyn, and you have excited my woman's interest. Of me you know
nothing.'
'Haven't I?' cried Harry, speaking to the pitch of his new warmth.
'My uncle Melville goes on about you tremendously--makes his wife as
jealous as fire. How could I tell that was your brother?'
'Your uncle has deigned to allude to me?' said the Countess,
meditatively. 'But not of him--of you, Mr. Harry! What does he say?'
'Says you're so clever you ought to be a man.'
'Ah! generous!' exclaimed the Countess. 'The idea, I think, is novel to
him. Is it not?'
'Well, I believe, from what I hear, he didn't back you for much over in
Lisbon,' said veracious Harry.
'I fear he is deceived in me now. I fear I am but a woman--I am not to
be "backed." But you are not talking of yourself.'
'Oh! never mind me,' was Harry's modest answer.
'But I do. Try to imagine me as clever as a man, and talk to me of your
doings. Indeed I will endeavour to comprehend you.'
Thus humble, the Countess bade him give her his arm. He stuck it out
with abrupt eagerness.
'Not against my cheek.' She laughed forgivingly. 'And you need not start
back half-a-mile,' she pursued with plain humour: 'and please do not look
irresolute and awkward--It is not necessary,' she added. 'There!'; and
she settled her fingers on him, 'I am glad I can find one or two things
to instruct you in. Begin. You are a great cricketer. What else?'
Ay! what else? Harry might well say he had no wish to talk of himself.
He did not know even how to give his arm to a lady! The first flattery
and the subsequent chiding clashed in his elated soul, and caused him to
deem himself one of the blest suddenly overhauled by an inspecting angel
and found wanting: or, in his own more accurate style of reflection,
'What a rattling fine woman this is, and what a deuce of a fool she must
think me!'
The Countess leaned on his arm with dainty languor.
'You walk well,' she said.
Harry's backbone straightened immediately.
'No, no; I do not want you to be a drill-sergeant. Can you not be told
you are perfect without seeking to improve, vain boy? You can cricket,
and you can walk, and will very soon learn how to give your arm to a
lady. I have hopes of you. Of your friends, from whom I have ruthlessly
dragged you, I have not much. Am I personally offensive to them, Mr.
Harry? I saw them let my brother pass without returning his bow, and
they in no way acknowledged my presence as I passed. Are they
gentlemen?'
'Yes,' said Harry, stupefied by the question. 'One 's Ferdinand Laxley,
Lord Laxley's son, heir to the title; the other's William Harvey, son of
the Chief Justice--both friends of mine.'
'But not of your manners,' interposed the Countess. 'I have not so much
compunction as I ought to have in divorcing you from your associates for
a few minutes. I think I shall make a scholar of you in one or two
essentials. You do want polish. Have I not a right to take you in hand?
I have defended you already.'
'Me?' cried Harry.
'None other than Mr. Harry Jocelyn. Will he vouchsafe to me his pardon?
It has been whispered in my ears that his ambition is to be the Don Juan
of a country district, and I have said for him, that however grovelling
his undirected tastes, he is too truly noble to plume himself upon the
reputation they have procured him. Why did I defend you? Women, you
know, do not shrink from Don Juans--even provincial Don Juans--as they
should, perhaps, for their own sakes! You are all of you dangerous, if a
woman is not strictly on her guard. But you will respect your champion,
will you not?'
Harry was about to reply with wonderful briskness. He stopped, and
murmured boorishly that he was sure he was very much obliged.
Command of countenance the Countess possessed in common with her sex.
Those faces on which we make them depend entirely, women can entirely
control. Keenly sensible to humour as the Countess was, her face sidled
up to his immovably sweet. Harry looked, and looked away, and looked
again. The poor fellow was so profoundly aware of his foolishness that
he even doubted whether he was admired.
The Countess trifled with his English nature; quietly watched him bob
between tugging humility and airy conceit, and went on:
'Yes! I will trust you, and that is saying very much, for what
protection is a brother? I am alone here--defenceless!'
Men, of course, grow virtuously zealous in an instant on behalf of the
lovely dame who tells them bewitchingly, she is alone and defenceless,
with pitiful dimples round the dewy mouth that entreats their
guardianship and mercy!
The provincial Don Juan found words--a sign of clearer sensations within.
He said:
'Upon my honour, I'd look after you better than fifty brothers!'
The Countess eyed him softly, and then allowed herself the luxury of a
laugh.
'No, no! it is not the sheep, it is the wolf I fear.'
And she went through a bit of the concluding portion of the drama of
Little Red Riding Hood very prettily, and tickled him so that he became
somewhat less afraid of her.
'Are you truly so bad as report would have you to be, Mr. Harry?' she
asked, not at all in the voice of a censor.
'Pray don't think me--a--anything you wouldn't have me,' the youth
stumbled into an apt response.
'We shall see,' said the Countess, and varied her admiration for the
noble creature beside her with gentle ejaculations on the beauty of the
deer that ranged the park of Beckley Court, the grand old oaks and
beeches, the clumps of flowering laurel, and the rich air swarming
Summer.
She swept out her arm. 'And this most magnificent estate will be yours?
How happy will she be who is led hither to reside by you, Mr. Harry!'
'Mine? No; there's the bother,' he answered, with unfeigned chagrin.
'Beckley isn't Elburne property, you know. It belongs to old Mrs.
Bonner, Rose's grandmama.'
'Oh!' interjected the Countess, indifferently.
'I shall never get it--no chance,' Harry pursued. 'Lost my luck with the
old lady long ago.' He waxed excited on a subject that drew him from his
shamefacedness. 'It goes to Juley Bonner, or to Rosey; it's a toss-up
which. If I'd stuck up to Juley, I might have had a pretty fair chance.
They wanted me to, that's why I scout the premises. But fancy Juley
Bonner!'
'You couldn't, upon your honour!' rhymed the Countess. (And Harry let
loose a delighted 'Ha! ha !' as at a fine stroke of wit.) 'Are we
enamoured of a beautiful maiden, Senor Harry?'
'Not a bit,' he assured her eagerly. 'I don't know any girl. I don't
care for 'em. I don't, really.'
The Countess impressively declared to him that he must be guided by her;
and that she might the better act his monitress, she desired to hear the
pedigree of the estate, and the exact relations in which it at present
stood toward the Elburne family.
Glad of any theme he could speak on, Harry informed her that Beckley
Court was bought by his grandfather Bonner from the proceeds of a
successful oil speculation.
'So we ain't much on that side,' he said.
'Oil!' was the Countess's weary exclamation. 'I imagined Beckley Court
to be your ancestral mansion. Oil!'
Harry deprecatingly remarked that oil was money.
'Yes,' she replied; 'but you are not one to mix oil with your Elburne
blood. Let me see--oil! That, I conceive, is grocery. So, you are
grocers on one side!'
'Oh, come! hang it!' cried Harry, turning red.
'Am I leaning on the grocer's side, or on the lord's?'
Harry felt dreadfully taken down. 'One ranks with one's father,' he
said.
'Yes,' observed the Countess; 'but you should ever be careful not to
expose the grocer. When I beheld my brother bow to you, and that your
only return was to stare at him in that singular way, I was not aware of
this, and could not account for it.'
I declare I'm very sorry,' said Harry, with a nettled air. 'Do just let
me tell you how it happened. We were at an inn, where there was an odd
old fellow gave a supper; and there was your brother, and another fellow
--as thorough an upstart as I ever met, and infernally impudent. He got
drinking, and wanted to fight us. Now I see it! Your brother, to save
his friend's bones, said he was a tailor! Of course no gentleman could
fight a tailor; and it blew over with my saying we'd order our clothes of
him.'
'Said he was a--!' exclaimed the Countess, gazing blankly.
'I don't wonder at your feeling annoyed,' returned Harry. 'I saw him
with Rosey next day, and began to smell a rat then, but Laxley won't give
up the tailor. He's as proud as Lucifer. He wanted to order a suit of
your brother to-day; but I said--not while he's in the house, however he
came here.'
The Countess had partially recovered. They were now in the village
street, and Harry pointed out the post-office.
'Your divination with regard to my brother's most eccentric behaviour was
doubtless correct,' she said. 'He wished to succour his wretched
companion. Anywhere--it matters not to him what!--he allies himself with
miserable mortals. He is the modern Samaritan. You should thank him for
saving you an encounter with some low creature.'
Swaying the letter to and fro, she pursued archly: 'I can read your
thoughts. You are dying to know to whom this dear letter is addressed!'
Instantly Harry, whose eyes had previously been quite empty of
expression, glanced at the letter wistfully.
Shall I tell you?'
'Yes, do.'
'It's to somebody I love.'
'Are you in love then?' was his disconcerted rejoinder.
'Am I not married?'
'Yes; but every woman that's married isn't in love with her husband, you
know.'
'Oh! Don Juan of the provinces!' she cried, holding the seal of the
letter before him in playful reproof. 'Fie!'
'Come! who is it?' Harry burst out.
'I am not, surely, obliged to confess my correspondence to you?
Remember!' she laughed lightly. 'He already assumes the airs of a lord
and master! You are rapid, Mr. Harry.'
'Won't you really tell me?' he pleaded.
She put a corner of the letter in the box. 'Must I?'
All was done with the archest elegance: the bewildering condescension of
a Goddess to a boor.
'I don't say you must, you know: but I should like to see it,' returned
Harry.
'There!' She showed him a glimpse of 'Mrs.,' cleverly concealing
plebeian 'Cogglesby,' and the letter slid into darkness. 'Are you
satisfied?'
'Yes,' said Harry, wondering why he felt a relief at the sight of 'Mrs.'
written on a letter by a lady he had only known half an hour.
'And now,' said she, 'I shall demand a boon of you, Mr. Harry. Will it
be accorded?'
She was hurriedly told that she might count upon him for whatever she
chose to ask; and after much trifling and many exaggerations of the boon
in question, he heard that she had selected him as her cavalier for the
day, and that he was to consent to accompany her to the village church.
'Is it so great a request, the desire that you should sit beside a
solitary lady for so short a space?' she asked, noting his rueful visage.
Harry assured her he would be very happy, but hinted at the bother of
having to sit and listen to that fool of a Parsley: again assuring her,
and with real earnestness, which the lady now affected to doubt, that he
would be extremely happy.
'You know, I haven't been there for ages,' he explained.
'I hear it!' she sighed, aware of the credit his escort would bring her
in Beckley, and especially with Harry's grandmama Bonner.
They went together to the village church. The Countess took care to be
late, so that all eyes beheld her stately march up the aisle, with her
captive beside her.
Nor was her captive less happy than he professed he would be. Charming
comic side-play, at the expense of Mr. Parsley, she mingled with
exceeding devoutness, and a serious attention to Mr. Parsley's discourse.
In her heart this lady really thought her confessed daily sins forgiven
her by the recovery of the lost sheep to Mr. Parsley's fold. The results
of this small passage of arms were, that Evan's disclosure at Fallow
field was annulled in the mind of Harry Jocelyn, and the latter gentleman
became the happy slave of the Countess de Saldar.