Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/367

 354 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-serjeant. 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, stupified 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 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 as 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.