_May 7, 1831_.
I wrote to Harriet yesterday all about Pakenham to the moment he left
this house with Sneyd to join Lestock in the City, and go on to
Gravesend.
Half an hour after we had parted from Pakenham, and before we had
recovered sense, came a great rap at the door. "Will you see anybody,
ma'am?" I was going to say, "No, nobody," but I bid Smith ask the name,
when behind him, as I spoke, enter Mrs. Lushington. "I have forced my
way up--forgive me, it is for Pakenham; I hope I am not too late; I've
brought him _good_ letters from Mrs. Charles Lushington."
Comprehending instantly the value of the letters, and our carriage being
most luckily at the door, into it Fanny and I got, and drove as hard as
we could down to the dock, to the very place where they were to take the
Gravesend boat. You may imagine the anxiety we were in to be in time,
boat waiting for no one; and then the stoppages of odious carts and
hackney coaches in the City: I do not believe we spoke three words to
each other all that long way. At last, when within a few minutes of the
end of our time, we were encompassed with carts, drays, and omnibuses,
in an impenetrable line seemingly before us. Fanny sent Smith on foot
with the letters and a pencil note. We got on wonderfully, our coachman
being really an angel. We reached the wharf. "Is the Gravesend boat
gone?" "No, ma'am, not this half-hour; half after four, instead of four,
to-day."
We took breath, but were still anxious, watching each with head out on
our own side; for Smith had not appeared, and Lestock, Sneyd, and
Pakenham had not arrived: great fear of missing them and the letters in
the hurly-burly of packages, and packers, and passengers, and sailors,
and _orderers_, and hackney coaches, and coachmen, and boatmen, men,
women, and children swarming and bawling.
But at last Smith and Lestock appeared together, and the letters got
into Pakenham's hand: he and Sneyd had gone into the boat, so we saw no
more of them; but Lestock sent us off on a new hurry-skurry for pistols,
ordered but not brought. To the Minerva counting-house we drove, to send
the pistols by some boatswain there: got to counting-house: "Boatswain
gone?" "No, ma'am, not yet," said the dear, smiling clerk. So all was
right, and Pakenham had his pistols.