Lovers, and of the Supper in the Inn at Resina.
[3] Much of this chapter is taken from an account of a visit to
"Pompeii" written in 1802.
The Admiral "found more to detain him in Naples than he had
anticipated." I write these words with a smile: they were his own. We
did not sail for Malta till October 15th, and then we had to go all
round Sicily. My Lady, partly, I suppose, for reasons to which I have
already alluded, was never satisfied without the Admiral went
somewhere by _barca_ or carriage. She loved open-air parties, and I
firmly believe loved the getting-up of them as much as any part of the
expedition. The Admiral said, with the very best grace, that he was
under his hostess's orders, and she was so infinitely charming and
full of entertainment that it did not cost a man much to be at her
orders. In good truth, she tried to anticipate every wish of his,
except it might be that of leaving him to rest in some pleasant corner
of her palace within hail of her voice. She certainly did not at this
time plan for secret meetings with him, though her manner was more
caressing to him in public than a prudent woman would have allowed
herself. For one kind of expedition he was always ready: he was much
interested in the monuments of Roman and Greek history--especially
Roman, for the Admiral had in his heart a profound respect for the
Romans as lords of the world, and as anticipating the place that he
meant England should have; and he had a sneaking contempt for the
Greeks, holding that they never fought like men save when they had a
bridge broken down behind them, or mere Asiatics opposed to them.
The city of Naples is not rich in such monuments, although the whole
half of the bay, from Naples to the ancient Misenum at the end of one
of the enclosing horns, is full of the villas and what not of the most
famous people of the court of Cæsar Augustus. And there are at the
foot of Mount Vesuvius cities of late years begun to be excavated. At
Forum Pompeji especially there is almost a whole city to be seen, and
the ancients have told us so much about the eruption which caused its
destruction that every traveller of intelligence who proceeds to
Naples dare scarcely leave it without having made an examination of
these ruins.
"Pompeji first, Nelson!" cried her Ladyship, coming upon us while Will
and I were taking our orders about some matter. She had a most easy
way of addressing men on the shortest acquaintance. "And we must go in
_calesses_, for our coaches would never get back alive from such a
road. I know not which are worst, the lava rocks you rise over, or the
lava sands you sink in."
The Admiral was much gratified, and My Lady rattled on merrily. "We
must have the Queen. The King does not signify; he would make some
reason to get off a-hunting, if we had him with us. But the Queen we
must have; for they always dig up a new house or temple, or at least a
skeleton or two in a mould of lava, for royalty. We will send for an
army of workmen, and the Director. I suppose we must have the
Director, though we get to work much the faster if we have not him to
say 'Gently, gently,' all the while, and 'Use the sounding rod before
the spade.' Yes, we must have the Queen, and she will bring so many
of her gentlemen and ladies; and we shall take how many? You, Nelson,
of course, and these boys, and----"
"Mr. Comyn, your Ladyship, my chaplain." He had not yet commenced
Emma, or dearest Emma, as he afterwards used, in public. "Mr. Comyn is
my library," he added in his gracious way, "upon such matters."
"Yes; Comyn must come," said her Ladyship, "but I don't think we'll
have Troubridge: he turns so glum sometimes. I'll go off and see the
Queen for her to fix a day, and whom she will have with her; and I
must see who are to be with me, and count how many _calesses_: we can
only put two into each if we drive ourselves or put the driver out on
the shaft; but they are fine, they give you a tossing like a boat,
with their high loose springs, but they will weather any rock, and I
assure you we shall have plenty."
"I fear I shall cut a very sorry figure," said the Admiral; "sea-sick
on land is shameful, and I am a very poor sailor, your Ladyship."
"_A fico_ Nelson; you shall drive me."
"Then I shall be wrecked at last, and I came near enough in the
_Vanguard_ when we were reconnoitring off Toulon before the race for
the Nile. But I'll drive your Ladyship; I never stayed in port for
fear of shipwreck, and never will."
It was fixed for the next day. The heat signified but little, for
these _calesses_ have large hoods, and the streets of Pompeji are so
narrow as to give some shade. I do not know how many _calesses_ there
were--more than we could easily count, as they met outside the palace
over against the church of S. Ferdinando. As the Admiral was
fulfilling his promise of driving her Ladyship, Will and I had a
_caless_ to ourselves, and you may be sure that we enjoyed it. Coming
last, as being the least present, we had all the fun of the fair; and
every one was making much splutter, because, though some were well
used to driving, they were mostly new to the handling of these
see-sawing _calesses_. I never in my whole life had the driving of
anything but an old pony and a shay: no more up to this time had Will,
though he afterwards prided himself on his horseflesh. But the mere
whipping up of a horse was fun enough for boys like us; and if we had
not had to keep our place in the rear of the line, I think that we
should have needed a deal of picking up on that road.
I shall not describe how we made our royal progress--we had the Queen
with us, mind--out of the Capuan Gate and past Portici, where their
Majesties have a palace and keep all the best of the things that are
found in Pompeji, even shaving the frescoes off the walls with a fine
kind of saw. Indeed, I was not able to observe much, for Will,
contrary to his usual wont, cried, "You drive, Tubby!"--which I was at
a loss to understand, until I espied that in the _caless_ in front of
us, of which the hood would not stay up, were seated the Prince of
Favara and his sister.
Once or twice, when we halted perforce, for this or the other reason
of My Lady, ever a creature of impulses, I was able to take my eye off
my horse, which in the general order, being the whip, I could not
afford to do. When I did so look up, I was not surprised that Will
bade me drive, for in all my life I never saw a woman with her head so
beautifully poised on her shoulders as Donna Rusidda, and the heat
brought the red into the clear cheeks of that delicate face. Her hair,
too, which was brushed up after the fashion of the day into something
very like the mode used on the Greek coins, had the most enchanting
little curls at the top of her slender neck.
When we arrived at our destination, we all drove into a spacious
courtyard, on a level with and a few yards distant from the high road,
from which it is separated by a large lattice gate, adjoining to the
abode of the only real inhabitant of the once magnificent and populous
town of Pompeji--the invalid soldier who acted as guardian and guide
to its remains, and who looked scared at the wholesale invasion of his
peaceful realm.
Her Ladyship had been true to her word in getting a royal order for
excavators, who turned up to an innumerable extent, and their
director. And there was, of course, our escort: we had rendezvoused at
the Palace because of the necessity of taking a patrol of cavalry to
protect us from annoyance by the sympathisers of the French party.
No sooner were we dismounted, than Mr. Comyn felt it his duty to
improve the occasion. He began on the vicissitudes of earthly
grandeur: this very dwelling of the Neapolitan veteran was once
tenanted by a maniple of those legionaries whose irresistible valour
had subdued all our hemisphere from the Tyne to the swampy banks of
the Nile, from the pillars of Hercules to the shores of India.
"Bravo, Comyn!" roared the Admiral, whom the Queen encouraged to treat
her as a friend rather than a sovereign: "what a rare _auspex_, is it
you call it? No, _augur_, you make. Why, since the fortunate event of
the 1st of August every one of these four points at this moment
acknowledges British sway; and not only the sea between them, but
every accessible corner, and the liquid part of the whole globe, from
Nootka Sound to Bass's Straits, is directed from half a dozen valves
in Charing Cross. But a truce to national bragging, which I detest as
much as individual self-praise! It will only do by way of a claptrap
at the end of a dry stage-speech, well and significantly bawled up to
the forum or the galleries. No more of it in this place: let us begin
the sober narrative of facts."
"Oh Lud!" said her Ladyship, "is it so bad as that? Your Majesty, may
the excavators cast about and find a good place to begin, that we may
have something to see while our ears are being tickled? A golden
statue let it be; not the same gold as the statue of Minerva, whose
head the peasant split open with a hoe."
In the face of her Ladyship's protests the excavators were marched
off to a place out of sight; the plain reason being that the part all
round where we were was already excavated down to its original level.
The quadrangular court which we first entered into might be as large
as the railed part of Leicester Square. It was surrounded on all sides
by a colonnade supporting the roof of a gallery, and from the gallery
you entered a number of small apartments not unlike the cells of a
prison, or, to use an affirmative comparison, greatly resembling the
galleries round some of our old inns, with the rooms adjoining. Only
in the present instance the corridor was on the ground floor, there
being no upper storey.
"This building, sir," said Mr. Comyn, after a lame parley with the
one-armed soldier, "was first taken for a gymnasium, afterwards for a
prison, and by some for a school of gladiators; at present it is
declared to have been a barrack for soldiers, because various pieces
of armour were found in some of the cells. The little apartments are
highly interesting. Many have their walls covered with inscriptions
and curious drawings."
"Very curious," said the Admiral dryly, pointing to a pencil sketch
such as one notices on the dead walls in the London streets which
happen to have a national school near them--the master or beadle or
other obnoxious person being represented by an outlined figure with
straight lines for the legs and arms, and some sort of an irregular
circle for head and body. This one had a nose added as well as an eye,
and his feet were represented by pothooks, and his hands by
toasting-forks, one of which held a straight weapon, looking, it must
be confessed, more like a rod than any sort of sword. The letters of
the inscription were all capitals, and although not absolutely like
our present Roman alphabet, might easily be read, particularly by one
who from Herculanean MSS. had become a little familiar with antique
penmanship.
This was Mr. Comyn's dictum, not mine, and the name of the figure was
Nonius Maximus.
The Queen bade Miss Cornelia Knight, who was one of the party, and had
a pretty talent for making poor sketches, to do a drawing of the
figure for Her Majesty; which produced much merriment, for the
one-armed guardian was such a recluse in his charge out here that he
did not know his company. He at once rebuked Her Majesty, informing
her that he had strict orders from the Queen not to allow the use of
pencil, paper, or any writing or drawing materials within the town of
Forum Pompeji. My Lady, after first exchanging confidential glances
with the faithful servant, slyly winked at the Queen with her left
eye, while a repeated gliding motion of her right thumb across the
finger nearest it made a certain telegraphic signal, and the Queen
made one who desired to serve her honestly a rogue, by giving him some
_carlins_, to be allowed to break the rules, which she had made
herself.
I could see that the Admiral was gravely shocked: the idea of
professional duty never left him in the most incongruous situations.
On a sight-seeing expedition like this, it was in the habit of my
Lady, and, I was told, of the Queen, to do that which might be least
expected of them. If there were but little to see, they would fly
through it and back again, in so short a space of time that all the
elaborate preparations should seem wasted; and if there was more to be
seen than a strong man could walk through on a long summer's day, they
would trifle by the hour at the very outset, as they seemed like to do
now. But the Admiral was of a different mind. He had come to see the
ruins so wondrously preserved for nigh twenty centuries by the
mummifying ashes,--how these mighty Romans lived whose ensample he was
never weary of studying. His acquaintance with their history was not
indeed profound, and in the studies of their antiquities he was even
less versed. But he had in his chaplain, Mr. Comyn, a ripe scholar,
with whom it was ever his wont to make all possible inquiry about a
place before he should visit it.
And My Lady, ever quick to feel the pulse of his desires, and having
the Queen accustomed to follow her impulses, with a laugh, in one
minute directed a forward movement.
The Admiral was much amazed at the smallness, nay, meanness of the
houses; and made inquiry if only the dwellings of the shop-keepers and
other baser sort of persons had been in the town, the rich resorting
to villas in the outskirts.
"By no means," said the Director: "this is a Roman senator's house you
have before you, and that which you have but now examined belonged to
one of the most famous proconsuls--a class which of all others had the
best opportunity of enriching themselves."
The Admiral was profoundly impressed.
"What a people!" he said. "A man who had ruled half Asia came to end
his days in a house which had no windows and no door, but such as we
give our servants at the kitchen-back; which covered no more ground
than a cottage, and had, like a cottage, only the one floor, and had
in the whole of it but one room large enough for company. How the
great Romans, for whom the world was too little, could bear to be
cooped up in those little cells, no larger than a cabin, in a climate
like this passes my comprehension."
All present agreed with him--as like as not their code of manners
demanded that they should appear to--all, except the Prince
Caracciolo, who was of the Neapolitan Navy, and of the party. He was a
man cut on the cross-grain, and said, with a licence very unusual
among Italians, except when they are looking for a quarrel: "If I
could persuade myself that these pig-styes were actually the work of
Roman architecture I should feel no difficulty in solving the doubts
of my credulous English friend. It was these very confined cells which
made them so eager to get abroad, and enlarge by conquest their
elbow-room. And the same reason induces us modern Italians who live in
comfortable, lofty, and spacious dwellings to remain where we are,
convinced, as we feel, that any change of abode would only be for the
worse."
The Prince, it must be known, had a good estate in Naples, at the
corner of the Chiaja, where the road goes off to Pausilippo, and
bounding on that side the fine new gardens of the Thuilleries, which
the King had made with pleached walks and a fair open space in the
midst, to display that wonder of antiquity, the Farnese Bull, which
came to him by inheritance a little since. Mr. Comyn did not render
his speech, knowing the Admiral's temper, and the avoidance of
quarrels commending itself to him as a clerk in holy orders. It was a
happy chance that he, not Will, was interpreting for the Admiral at
the moment. Not that Will would have rendered his impertinence to the
Admiral, but that he would have felt it incumbent upon himself to
force the stout, ill-conditioned Prince to swallow an insult direct,
or fight.
But Master Will was more profitably engaged. The Prince of Favara, as
is so honourably often the case with Sicilian nobles, was a great
amateur in the antiquities of his country, and the ruins lately laid
bare at Forum Pompeji and Herculaneum were of special interest to him,
for he had, among the beggarly remnants of a patrimony which had come
down to him, a hill some ten miles from Palermo and two from the court
suburb of Bagheria, a bluff barren hill which had been the site of the
ancient city of Soluntum founded by the Phœnicians, where the men who
tended the vines and olives were for ever turning up some fragment of
ancient-world temples or dwellings. He was too poor to have the hill
excavated as he desired; indeed, the very vineyards and olive-gardens
were leased to a creditor, strictly bound down to do no digging above
what was necessary for trenching the trees. The Prince had dreams of
laying bare a Sicilian Pompeji when he should have made his fortune,
which he was not like to do except by marriage with an heiress, a
commodity not too plentiful at the Neapolitan Court. But he was not a
Royal favourite, though attached to the Court; and further, any money
which Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies bestowed upon his favourites
was expected to be duly wasted in riotous living.
Well, the Prince of Favara was for showing the city as it should be
shown to his late enemy, Will; and his sister--who had come under his
protection--was as attached to their buried city on the hill, and
therefore to buried cities generally, as himself; and I was, as ever,
with Will. And looking up to Will as I did, it seemed his plain right
that he should walk with the beautiful Donna Rusidda and I with the
Prince, lagging bravely. I had, moreover, I think I may say without
vanity, more book-brains than Will, who was a man of action and
perhaps a little narrow--which the Prince was not long in learning.
For Will was not of the kind who can simulate by a fire of small
questions interest in a matter which does not come into his thoughts.
So the Prince had perforce to address all his information to me. He
had, since we were away fighting at the Nile, picked up a very little
English from My Lady, who had been interested in him on account of the
story of his _duello_. But it was so little that his entire attention
was necessary for explaining the smallest point to me. But the
exercise gave him much pleasure. Unlike the Englishman, the Italian
loves to adventure in a foreign language.
We wandered down to a fine house near the ancient burial ground, which
was, according to the Roman wont, outside the city gate upon the road
which led to Rome. This the Prince told me, pointing it as an
instance of the imperial sentiment of his ancestors. "And this
dwelling," he said, "was the Villa of no less a personage than
Cicero."
Before a small but neat house a garden was laid out, in the middle of
which a pond was sunk. The empty receptacle of water was in good
preservation. The stone borders of the compartments of the garden were
likewise plainly discernible. The statues, however, with which the
whole was decorated at the first discovery, had of course been removed
to the Queen's Museum at Portici. But there were two short spans, on
opposite sides of the garden, of a covered walk which had once been
carried round it. We were commencing to look about, when the Prince
called out--"Come and see the wine-cellar: 'tis the best in the city!"
"No, thanks--not for me," said Will. I do not know whether he pictured
to himself long rows of _amphoræ_--I think that's the name--of
Falernian or Chian or whatever it was called, we used to learn about
in Horace--ready to our choice and only awaiting the breaking of a
seal. I myself could have endured any wine that was not rank vinegar;
for October mornings in Naples are warmer than our English summer, and
we had had a long dusty drive.
"Nay, I am afraid that I have nothing to offer you but the sight of a
number of fine jars," said the Prince, putting aside Will's refusal.
"I will not call them empty, for they do contain a residuary
crust--the coke of a burnt resinous substance. The people of this city
were for the most part Greeks, and the Greeks, as you know, still
resin their wine."
Now, I was but a boy then, and I was all for having a piece of this
petrified wine lees to keep in my sea-chest as what the Italians call
a _curio_, and I hung behind the Prince for that purpose. But he had
eyes, like the Queen's picture of Argus, in the back of his head, so I
was compelled to take him into my confidence. At first he was very
severe, and talked of Vandals and the Queen's orders; but I said,--"A
loose piece, a very little loose piece: surely that would not matter."
He gave a good-natured laugh, as if to say, "You are only a boy," and
stooped to bury his arm in one of the great jars, almost the shape of
an egg (just such, save for the lid, as those you may see as signs of
the sellers of sugars and spices in London). But as his hand was about
to touch the crust there was a sudden hollow rolling resembling that
of thunder. It seemed to roll round and round the curved ceiling of
the dismal vault in which we stood in almost total darkness.
"_Il monte! il monte!_" cried poor Donna Rusidda, in a paroxysm of
fright, and fled incontinently, closely followed by Will. But the
Prince stopped to secure me my _curio_, quoting, with a gaiety that
had a ring of forcedness to me, the Neapolitan proverb, _Heaven has
its eye upon us still_, which they use when some circumstance
unforeseen prevents the completion of an evil deed. But if he was
scared for the second, he recovered himself forthwith, for it was the
tradition of his house to fly in the face of fortune and fate and
omens, and all that sort of seaman's gospel. And I am sure I liked the
prospect a good deal less than he did. For both he and his sister and
his uncle were accustomed to consider the approaching extinction of
their house--it was almost their religion; but I, although it was part
of my profession to be killed, had only signed the contract to die for
my country, and expected to die with at least plenty of sea and sky
room; and that awful sound began to operate upon my nerves. I must own
that the unfortunate catastrophe of the poor Pompejans presented
itself in most horrid colours before my mind's eye. I expected an
instantaneous eruption of the _volcano_--as they call it--Pompeji
overwhelmed a second time and me with it; to be excavated perhaps some
thousand years hence, and by an excusable anachronism to be taken for
a Roman skeleton, and hung up and handled by every curious Miss in the
museum of one of our descendants. But as the Prince was determined to
grope until he found me my _specimen_, a loose piece which he could
take without the qualms of conscience, I could not as a British
officer--though I was but a mid--display any desire for haste before a
mere Italian. And this though a terrific rattle on the vaulted roof
told me that the new eruption had begun and we were right under the
deadly shower of ashes.
After what seemed an eternity, but was, likely, less than a minute, he
found a fragment that satisfied him, and we made our way out, where I
may swear that my spirits rose more speedily than his, for my shower
of ashes was only rain of the cataract kind which comes down in the
tropics, mingled with hail, to which our battle of the Nile seemed
child's play; and it was no eruption at all, but that splitting, not
very loud thunder, which will accompany a storm of lightning right
overhead, almost without intermission, and which is even more
terrifying than the loudest disconnected claps. But he saw that which
was to a Sicilian of a more disturbing nature than bullet-stones of
hail--his sister under one of the spans of covered walk alone with
Will. It was true that they were in full view of us; but no Sicilian
woman is ever allowed to stand out of earshot with a man who is not
her brother or father, and in this instance there was the aggravating
circumstance of that mock wooing. But it was as much as one's life was
worth to venture out into that hail, even across so small a matter as
a Pompejan garden court; and in the Queen's circle at Naples the freer
English habits had crept in much, owing to the familiarity of the
Queen with the English who came there, and notably Sir William and My
Lady. And therefore, with an Italian's humour, he made a jest of
necessity. He had on a fine court dress, orange and purple silk. "It
is my holiday suit," he said, "and beggars cannot be wastrels."
The Prince needed all the comforts of philosophy, for the thunder and
lightning were awful. You expected the mountain itself to have been
swallowed up as well as its disgorged city of Pompeji; and each time
that the storm was at its worst, Donna Rusidda would clutch hold of
Will and cling to him convulsively. I looked on my neighbour's face
for a fury to which the storm would be as nothing; but he said: "'Tis
her way--I would I were by her. She needs to be held; I have fears for
her mind in a storm like this."
I think most officers in our fleet would have held her in Will's
place, brother or no brother; but Will would do no more than take her
hands in his and endeavour by strong pressure to inspire her with some
of his own invincible composure, which presently she began to feel.
Her brother, with Italian quickness of perception, grasped the
significance of Will's action.
I, looking at the two of them, imagined that the girl, with her lovely
eloquent face blanched with fear, and showing a whole range of
feelings from terror to gratitude, with her figure now shrinking, now
clinging to that splendid image of intrepid youth, must be silently
pouring out her heart to him; while all I could gather from Will's
attitude was that he was striving to do his duty under circumstances
the most difficult and delicate, and that he was for changing places
with either of us.
The storm lasted long--I cannot say how long; but it had not been over
more than a very few minutes when the tension on our minds was broken
in an unexpected way; and, mind you, there was tension, for during
that storm his late adversary had conceived for Will a warmth of
friendship to which for the time even mine could offer no parallel.
Will seemed to the Prince the most splendid gentleman he had ever
seen, and wild thoughts were surging through the Italian's brain at
the idea of the old tree of the Favara, which had seemed to have borne
its last fruit, being brought back to its ancient strength by having
this superb Northern stock grafted on to it. The Prince was
registering a vow that Will should marry his sister--not by compulsion
at the sword's point, as he had once thought, but as the crown of
friendship; not in fulfilment of the ancient prophecy which predicted
the end of their house, but in final justification of the courage with
which they had always defied Fate.
Only some such dream could account for the extraordinary behaviour of
the Prince when the thunder and lightning and hail had ceased, and
were succeeded by a cataract of rain; unless it were that the
Sicilians, with those strange marriage customs of theirs, considered
that a man and a woman who had once been plighted to each other, even
in a one-sided troth, of whose existence one of the parties was
ignorant, were absolved from the almost monastic restrictions placed
between unmarried people of opposite sexes.
What passed between them I have had more than once from Will over our
Madeira in his mansion-house at Eastry, when he had for years been
married to Katherine. It may have gained a little in the telling, but
Will was not like most men--he was too proud to embellish, to himself
or others--and I must confess that what he told me afterwards tallied
with what I gathered from their mien.
For when physical fear departed with the thunder it is certain--as
certain as I could make through rain so heavy--that Donna Rusidda
began to regard Will more after the manner of the daughters of Eve.
"Signor Hardres," she began, "it is strange that I should be prisoned
here with you, who have offered me the gravest insult which any man
can offer a Sicilian woman."
"'Tis."
"I took your word as a gentleman, by the code of your own country,
that you were ignorant how you were insulting me."
"No man shall ever make me break my word."
"I believe that," she replied, with a charming expression on her face
which he did not then understand, but which in reality marked the
struggle between a pure high soul and an impulse inherited from
generations of ancestresses for whom intrigue was the one interest
open to a woman. Men had their wars, their politics, their painting,
many things--and woman nothing; though there was once upon a time a
Sicilian poetess. But then what is poetry but the breath of intrigue?
She had something on her mind which she could best gain through Will,
and being only a woman, and a woman of the South at that, she was well
content to make him burn his fingers for the slight he had put upon
her, no matter how unwitting he had been.
"Tell me," she said, "why did you come under my window?"
"I was a young fool."
"Perhaps. But that does not explain everything."
"I wanted an escapade. I am no better than other sailors. But their
usual escapades of horseplay are not to my taste--I prefer fighting to
that. Indeed, I did fight a few times as the alternative, till they
grew tired of such serious jests."
"Granted; but why was I honoured with supplying the victim?"
"You were the only unmarried lady with whom I had had the honour of
conversation."
"Yes. But if you meant nothing by your serenading, any window would
have done--some window in one of the palaces over the Marina, for
instance. You were not, I think, staying at an inn, but on your ship?"
"Yes."
"And the Mont' alti Palace is far from the landing steps and not
above-easy to find for a stranger."
"Where there's a will there's a way."
He was of course speaking in Italian to her, so that the appropriate
play on his own name did not appear, nor had she sufficient English to
understand it if he had given the proverb in English; but the truth of
it struck home to me when he put it into English for me.
"Assuredly, signor," she replied; "but why should there have been the
will?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"You don't know? Can young English officers leave their ship at all
times without question?"
He shook his head.
"You had leave?"
"No."
"You would then have had serious trouble had you been discovered by
your captain?"
"I suppose so."
"You were not rowed ashore, I suppose, in that fine barge with the
guard of honour assigned to you, as when you came to threaten our poor
old Governor in the name of His Britannic Majesty?"
"No, I was not."
"Nor even in the very smallest of the ship's boats--officially?"
"No."
"And a watch is kept on English ships."
"Certainly."
"So that you could not take a speaking horn and halloa for a _barca_?"
"No."
"You took, then, the trouble to prearrange that a _barca_ should come
alongside of your ship at such a time; it is not necessary that the
watch should know this, for a _barca_ man can move in silence when
directed, and on such an occasion would not use lights. The spot where
he should lie under the ship therefore would have been indicated with
some care, and most secret signals concerted. Also there was a guard
at the landing stage even at Syracuse, when your great fleet seemed
like to blow us out of memory; also there was the sentry to be bribed
at the town gates, or a rope ladder to be at a certain place for
scaling the walls; also without a trusty guide you would have searched
all night for the Mont' alti Palace, which you had never seen; also
the lute which you played was native Sicilian, and like to be
especially procured for the purpose. If your Admiral had meant to take
the city by a night surprise, he could not have laid his plans more
carefully; and you did all this without any definite object?"
"Madam, if you must have it, I thought you very pretty and proud."
"More desirable than some ladies in Syracuse?"
"More desirable than any lady in Syracuse."
"At the same time, a woman upon whom you could play a scurvy jest?"
"A pure jest, without any _arrière pensee_."
"And you thought a high-born lady was the proper food for such a
jest?"
"Madam, I do not think so. I behaved like a young blackguard, and I am
utterly ashamed of myself."
"Well, you fought like a young lion to atone for it." Then, as if she
had said too much, or used too soft a tone, she added quickly: "But
how is a woman going to forgive you, when you thought it a mere jest
to woo her, and were so deadly serious about not marrying her that you
were ready to die for it?"
"I don't know," gasped the bewildered Will. "Perhaps--perhaps--you can
tell me?"
"Oh, I.... Well, a woman is always flattered by a man being willing
to die for her, even if he is only dying to be rid of her."
"I deserve your sarcasm; but I had your good will the night the
Admiral came to the Mont' alti Palace, or I might not be here now."
"A woman can forgive anything to a brave--boy!"
"Say cub, madam."
"No, I will not," she said, with a pretty toss of her head, which I
noted. "You began like a Neapolitan, but you ended like a hero. And it
would have been a very sorry affair to have had blood, or death, or
anything unforgetable marring so fair a performance; and there was
more besides, which I would fain not tell you."
"I pray you." (This was the time at which I, Thomas Trinder, noted
what seemed a struggle between hesitancy and archness.) "I _pray_
you," reiterated Will.
"Must I tell you?" she asked, in the prettiest confusion.
A look of mastery passed over Will's face. There was no smile of
triumph, as there might have been on most young officers' faces at
such a moment; but he showed sufficient to the quick eye of a fencing
woman.
"Because I knew, just ere it was too late, that I did not love you,
and nothing would have induced me to marry you, and nothing would
induce me now," she added, looking maddeningly lovely, and with a
certain softness on her face which might or might not be taken to
modify her words.
Will gathered a little hope from this look; for, strange to say, this
cartel of defiance and renunciation obliterated the image of
Katherine, and made him determine, with all the calm resolution and
fierce temper in his nature, that marry her he would.
"But though I cannot, and never would, and could not bring myself to
marry you, I desire you to be my dearest friend, as Englishmen can be
the friends of women. True, in Sicily there can be no friendship
between men and women, because our men are what they are. Therefore a
man is never suffered to be alone with a woman until he is irrevocably
pledged to marry her--a pledge that can only be revoked by death."
"And yet you marry such men?"
"Such is our fate. Besides, what is marriage but a licence between a
man and a woman?"
"But after marriage it is like England: you have no restrictions
between the friendships of men and women."
"We have no restrictions as to friendship; but it is not like England,
if what the English, who are at the Court--and there are many--say is
true."
Delicacy prompted Will not to question her, and there was a little
silence, during which she tried to lift the mosaics out of the broken
pattern under their feet with the point of her dainty shoe. Then she
looked up and said, "Those friendships are not friendships--they are
love affairs. But I wish our friendship to be like your English
friendships."
Will bit his lip, and there was another silence, during which the
white horse in the chariot underneath them lost the little black cube
which had been his eye for twenty centuries. Seemingly satisfied with
her success in this direction, she reiterated, "You will give me your
friendship, Signor Vill?"
He gave her his hand.
At that moment we heard My Lady's voice--"There they are, Cesare: give
them their donkeys."
It had, it appeared, occurred to her fertile mind that the Court of
Naples should ride round the excavations on the fine asses which they
breed in this part of Italy. The Admiral wished to see everything--no
light task in the heat of a Neapolitan October day; and driving was an
impossibility in the narrow streets, even if the chariot ruts, a
couple of inches deep in the lava paving of the roads, had been the
proper space apart for the wheels of the _calesses_ in which we had
come from Naples. What then but ride on asses? The Court would take it
as a jest, and the Admiral should see all he desired.
The idea, like so many of My Lady's ideas, proved to be an
inspiration. The managing--the difficulty of managing--the strange
asses hastily impressed, entertained the empty heads to whom the very
antiquities were interesting seen in this lazy manner, and afforded
pleasant food for jest. To those who were minded to see, everything
Pompejan presented itself now with an added interest. For once the
impluvia--the shallow marble ponds set in the centre of the sloping
courts--had their complement of water, and all the ingenious devices
for conveying the coveted moisture from every surface of the house to
the pond in the centre, were at work.
We clattered a little along a street, when we heard My Lady's clear
full voice call out to stop, and those who would to dismount. The
Admiral, for all his one arm, was off his ass before any one else, and
helping My Lady to dismount, and enter a house of a better kind, which
by the traces of mould still left could not have been so long
unearthed.
The statues of little Amoretti were still on a little marble island in
the centre of the pool, and there were a pair of marble shafts with
the heads and shoulders of satyrs standing in the court. My Lady
hurried us into a sequence of small chambers, no larger than the
chambers made in the thickness of the walls of ancient English
castles, which were painted in bright colours with borders of flowers,
and had groups of animals masking as human beings for their centres. A
grasshopper driving a kind of buggy with a parrot for his steed was
very quaint: I had not thought that the Romans knew of parrots.
When My Lady had called Pepino to throw a bucket of water over the
designs and freshen them up, their brilliance was startling. Nor were
they true frescoes, as we now know the art in England, for I rubbed my
finger against them whilst they were wet, but could get no stain.
"You will soon be able to see them better," said the Queen--who went
round the excavations with the eye of a purchaser, who had had a
residue thrown in--"for I am going to have those pictures of the
ancients sawn off the walls and carried to my palace."
"They were better here," said the Admiral boldly, when My Lady
interpreted.
She repeated his remark to Her Majesty, who said,--
"Tut! tut! A few storms such as we have had to-day, and a summer or
two of the sandy breath of the sirocco, and where would they be?"
Then occurred a lively little dialogue, interpreted, with
improvements, no doubt, by her Ladyship.
"If it were in England I make bold to think that we should roof them
in with glass."
"You English are made of money."
"A nation need not be made of money to have this whole city roofed in
with glass, as it is given back to the daylight; and these would be
the finest museums in the world. The Romans were the chief race worth
considering in the ancient world, and here we have the actual houses
in which they lived, with the ashes still in the braziers and the
bread in the bins."
"I think we must give you Pompeji as your dowry when the King has that
patent of nobility drawn out which he wishes to have the honour of
conferring upon you; and then you can put it all under one hall roof,
Admiral."
"You are too good, Your Majesty, but I should feel like a fish out of
water with an estate on a continent. I am an islander, and islands are
in the keeping of fleets."
"You are running away, Admiral, for the first time," said the Queen,
laughing good-naturedly; "but if you won't take the city, the city
must come to Portici. One cannot make these expeditions out here every
day--why, it has been at the peril of our lives," she added, suddenly
remembering the hail--"but in the palace one can be surrounded all day
long with these oldest paintings in the world. And sawing them off
does not hurt them: why, the ancients did it themselves! When
Herculaneum was dug out we found in one chamber the pictures ready
sawn off for a removal. It was put off by the eruption for a couple of
thousand years, but we carried out the wishes of the former owners."
"Oh, Your Majesty!" said the Admiral.
And this is how we cavalcaded round Pompeji. Nor did we confine
ourselves to the streets: we rode into the temples, up to the very
altars; and in one of them--the temple, I think, of some Egyptian
god--speaking through the interpretation of My Lady, the Director
called the Admiral's attention to a secret passage perforated in two
places, observing that it was in that passage, and through its
openings, that the concealed priests of the goddess were wont to
pronounce the oracles to be delivered to a credulous multitude. He was
going to add to this valuable piece of information other particulars,
perhaps equally interesting, when the Prince Caracciolo stopped his
progress sourly by telling him he need be at no further trouble, since
he was sure that the milord Inglese would not believe one word of the
story: the gentleman was too great an admirer of antiquity to be
persuaded that his friends, the ancients, would be capable of
upholding fraud in their worship. "I, for my part," he added, "am
convinced that all the oracles we read of in history were contrived by
similar tricks of imposition." And then this strange man, who in his
own religion was profoundly superstitious, changed of a sudden, and
would have us believe that these oracles were by direct inspiration
of Satan, the arch-fiend of mankind, who, before the establishment of
the Catholic faith, was absolute lord and master of the human race.
Once again the Prince's conversation had to be left uninterpreted to
the Admiral. This was a warning to My Lady, who, with the adroitness
for which she was famous, immediately contrived to fill the Queen with
a fresh desire, which was that the Court should sup at a well-known
wayside house, a mere _trattoria_, which there was at Resina, on the
way back to Naples. So back the donkeys clattered along the rutted
lava street to the courtyard outside which we had left our _calesses_.
On the road to Resina they were not all blessings which the party in
their hearts showered upon My Lady. The courtiers were tired of their
_al fresco_ day, and wishful to be back and banqueting in Naples in
the least possible time; for they had had their breakfast, which
corresponds to our midday meal in England, portentously early, and
though they eat but two regular meals a day, the Neapolitans, who were
accustomed to being in attendance on the Queen and My Lady, were for
the most part _gourmands_, who looked to making up at their dinner for
what they had scamped at their breakfast. But a little before Resina
their opinions underwent a change, for it came on a smart shower, and
a _caless_ gives but little shelter. There had, moreover, been not the
slightest sign of rain when we left Naples. The ladies were for the
most part provided with cloaks. The Italian lady is both precious of
her clothes and fond of wrapping, though indifferent to the most icy
draughts. But some of the men were ill provided, notably the Prince
Caracciolo, who was just two in front of us, and in spite of his
reputed wealth, of a frugal turn.
Hastily stopping his _caless_, and handing the reins to the lady he
was driving, the wife of a friend to whom he paid much attention, he
requested her to stand up, and in an incredibly brief space of time
had whipped his cocked beaver into the seat, and with the utmost
sangfroid replaced it with a bandeau formed of his handkerchief, which
unequivocally betrayed his attachment to the narcotic comfort of
Virginia dust. With a wonderful celerity for him, his upper garment,
which was of pale blue silk, and buttoned with unbecoming tightness
over his unwieldy figure, was turned inside out, and a pleasing
contrast formed between the milky hue of the sleeves and the purple
bombazine lining of the rest of his habit.
You can hardly imagine what a figure of fun he made to us boys, who
had already taken a violent dislike to the man, with his spleen and
his shifting, inscrutable eyes. But he came out in a rather more
welcome light shortly; for when we reached the inn at Resina, and had
stampeded from the _calesses_ for shelter into the huge sort of
kitchen, lighted only by the great coach doorway, which served for the
eating house as well as for the cooking place, there was such a
confusion that we had doubts of getting even a _cena_, which, as every
one knows, is a much inferior thing to a _pranzo_. But then the dour
Prince, unmindful of his ridiculous attire, put on an air of smiling
self-sufficiency, and saying, "_Lascia far a me_," went out, and
presently reappeared with the Padrone, who, with the help of his
women, had been pushing the abandoned _calesses_ out of the rain under
a kind of pent-house. The Padrone, with whom the Prince seemed to be
strangely familiar, made his appearance in the _negligé_ of a nightcap
and a calico short jacket, and having understood our present wants,
though he had no idea of the Italians of our company being anything
more than well-to-do gentry, disappeared with the truly Neapolitan
promise, "_Avrà un buon pranzo in un momento_."
"That's a very short time," said the Queen.
"Indeed, you will get it in a very few minutes," said Caracciolo.
The Queen turned on him with the haughtiness that came so naturally to
the daughter of Maria Theresa: "The Prince seems to know Resina better
than I should have expected."
"Yes, your Majesty. The fact is, that there is an estate in the
neighbourhood to which I go for hunting."[4]
[4] More what we should call shooting in England.
"Indeed!" said the Queen; "and do you get good sport?"
"Oh, excellent, your Majesty--excellent."
"The King will be glad to hear of it. He is always glad of fresh
country to hunt so near Naples."
"I should be most honoured," said the Prince, turning round to scowl
at the innkeeper, who had returned. We caught the scowl, and wondered
if it conveyed more than that the Prince's temper was ruffled. Our
patience had been put to no great trial. The innkeeper had come to
announce the _buon pranzo_, which consisted of a tolerable vermicelli
soup, a pork fry, and a dish of delicate little fish unfortunately
fried in oil. The Italian ladies turned up their noses at the fish: to
cook in oil was the sign of a very poor eating-house. To us boys,
however, all was manna in the desert, and Prince Caracciolo fell to
with such energy and rapacity that before I had despatched four or
five of the little transparent fish, which almost fell to pieces, he
had emptied the dish in front of him altogether. The little creatures
glided down his fauces unmasticated, much more quickly than they move
in their native element.
Noticing the dismay on the faces of the men in the company, he
mentioned that the supply was unlimited, and that more would be
brought in hot from the pan as required. The Queen called for
_lachrime Christi_, saying, "To dine at the foot of Vesuvio and not
drink _lachrime Christi_, would be worse than being at Rome and not
seeing St. Peter's."
"_Vulite roba buona?_"[5] asked mine host, not in the least knowing
who she was, but gathering from her appearance that she was rich
enough to like his best.
[5] "Would you like good stuff?"
"_Si, signor_," she replied, with a little smile at the fellow's naïve
ignorance. Never before had a royal party dined more economically:
including the "capital stuff," the bill did not come up to seven
carlins a head--half a crown perhaps of our money. And when the bill
was brought, or rather the amount named--for in these humble
_trattorie_ they save the expense of bill-paper--she ordered an equal
amount to be added to it, with the good wishes of their Majesties of
the Two Sicilies.
The man was aghast, until he had a nudge from Caracciolo: "Don't you
see that it is Her Majesty, _Pasquale_?" And then we had the civility
and obeisances which would have spoiled the whole fun of the feast if
our incognito had been betrayed earlier. And My Lady, in particular,
had enjoyed herself mightily: she loved new dishes, and vowed that she
would have pork fry and those little sand-fish done in oil at her next
supper at the Embassy.
We did well in stopping. A heavenly evening had succeeded the storm
and shower; the latter had precipitated every azotic impurity in the
atmosphere, and imparted to it a fresh supply of oxygen; a luxuriant
vernal vegetation exhaled its perfumes more freely--it was a treat to
breathe! A brilliant moon assisted to conduct us safely and pleasantly
through Portici to the Castel del Carmine; and, skirting the shore
past the Immacolata, we rounded the Castel Nuovo to the Royal Palace,
where we drew up in a kind of salute while the Queen entered, and then
dispersed to our several destinations.