On learning, she would not hear of the body being left in the courtyard, but motioned the bearers to take it into a large kind of hall, and then sent them off to have supper with her servants while they were waiting. But we two and our thirty made excuse through Will that we were related to the dead, and were consequently unable to enter a house until he should be solemnly buried.
“As you will,” she said; and there we stood drawn up, solemnly guarding the door through which our new comrade’s body had been carried, and watching in an interested way the unloading of the present of wine which the King had sent to My Lady. By-and-by, when it was all finished, the priest went out, and, finding the flare signal removed, gave the order for us to proceed on our way to the little graveyard at Pausilippo, where we buried our comrade with the usual rites; after which we marched down to our church with the green and yellow dome, every one of us, I believe, thoroughly disappointed that some alarm had not arisen to make the priest-fellow with his big purple-studded cross give us the signal to whip out our cutlasses from under our cloaks in the Black-eyed Susan style. However, no such incident happened, and we stepped into the little church, and resigned our positions in the guild, and stepped out again without attracting particular notice; and we went on board our boat, which I remarked was the launch, with a carronade in the bows, and so to the ship.
The next day Will and I received a hint that our presence at the Palace was not desirable; My Lady, who was a born plotter, very probably conceiving that something might leak out from our conversation. At any rate she bade us come up to the Embassy in the afternoon and dine with her—a mark of graciousness which suggested to our disappointed minds that she had had two fingers in the pie. I was glad enough. It outraged my dignity when she kissed me once at the banquet after our day at Pompeji; and at other times she had made me look foolish in public; but in her own palace it was indeed a privilege to be near this woman whose beauty and engagingness I have never seen equalled. Her whole attitude was so frankly caressing—I do not mean in the matter of actual embraces, but in the gracious warmth and unrestrained naturalness of the bearing with which she treated all around her, as if they had been the members of her actual family. But Will could barely be civil to her. Donna Rusidda’s dislike may have been reflected in him, though I suspect that it was more his resenting My Lady’s influence over the Admiral. Not, I believe, that at this time he had the smallest suspicion of any improprieties between them, or even that her attitude to the Admiral was more familiar than it was to any of us, whom she might at the moment be patronising in her airy way. It was more an innocent air of patronage to him, the familiarity of addressing him as “Nelson,” the dragging him in her train to this or that rout, as if he were an ordinary gentleman about town proud to have the escorting of a beautiful woman. Will would have liked to have seen the same distance between the Admiral and her as there was between the Admiral and his officers—a distance which, even in one so genial, the discipline of the Service made very marked. Not even Captain Troubridge, who had been his shipmate for five-and-twenty years, would now address him as “Nelson,” and Will saw no reason why My Lady should be even as familiar as Captain Troubridge. There was a streak of hardness in Will’s nature, which made him seem, in that one instance, sensible of, but not to be moved by, auburn hair and upturned eyes and laughing mouth, no matter how oval the face or how faultless the arching of the brows.
And he could see that the Admiral had not this immovability. He had, further, more active grudges. He regarded My Lady as being responsible for the Admiral’s accepting the mass of absurd compliments in the shape of deputations, processions, masquerades, and what not. Celebrations, in his opinion, should have been confined to military parades and the like. But at the bottom of everything I believe his deepest grudge against My Lady was that, when talking to Englishmen, she had not the guardedness of an English lady. What she might do with Italians was different. Extravagance was a national trait, and it is not surprising that one so prejudiced should have considered that what was good enough for an Italian was not good enough for an Englishman. I know now that she truly was more of a lady in Italian than she was in English; for in England the people among whom she had formed her ideas and learnt her mode of speech were dissipated, or of humble birth; while in Naples she had spent her time amongst the highest in the land and the most erudite. Sir William was best as a sçavant.
I should have wondered why My Lady did not attempt to subjugate Will in place of the Admiral, were it not that I knew it was her pride to reflect herself in the Admiral’s glory. I think she was at this time intoxicated with that, and had yet no ulterior idea of, through him, having as great a place in England as she had at Naples. Of one thing I am quite certain, that she was the most passionate hero-worshipper, and capable of a passionate affection for a lovable nature; and no man ever doubted that the Admiral was the most lovable man in the fleet as well as the most heroic. But the Admiral, though a well-born man, a great-nephew of the greatest Norfolk man before him—the great Sir Robert Walpole—was a plain man, small, and with no more high birth than beauty written on his face; whereas Will’s proud beauty was more than enough for a prince. He had, I should have thought, just the beauty and breeding which she should have found irresistible. There was generally between them, therefore, no better than an armed truce, which My Lady’s goodness of heart made her constantly forget and do him as generous a turn as she would to any of her favourites.
Possession of the Journal has supplied me the clue to what I did not quite understand at the time. Here, for instance, is an entry I see:—
Extract from the Admiral’s Journal, Naples, Dec. 16th.
“A most extraordinary thing has happened within the last hour, which I pray may turn out well. I was sitting writing at my table by the light of a couple of wax-candles, placed one on each side of my writing, and with my face towards the door—a trick a man, who has been fighting all his life, cannot get out of when he is going to give such close attention to a matter as to absorb his sense of hearing. I heard a faint noise, but took no note of it. On its repetition, and when I looked up, I saw in front of me a lady with her hood drawn and enveloped in a large cloak. These she flung off, exclaiming that she was heated with running, of which there were evident traces, for the flounces of her dress were torn and full of dust, and her slippers, which, like her dress, were of satin, were slashed. She had come quite close up to the table, not wishing to be overheard. It was the Princess of Favara, a lady of the Queen’s household, and often with her; whom I have noticed besides as being the most beautiful of the maids of honour, who in this country are selected for their beauty.
“Beside a woman like Emma she is, in the ordinary, somewhat colourless, though the clear olive of her face is very fine; but on this occasion it was flushed with a rich crimson which made her rival even Emma; and her eyes, which I have noticed as being of a quiet dark grey, shone blue; and her lips were red as blood against the small white teeth as she stood for a few seconds open-mouthed before me.
“‘Princess!’ I cried. She put her finger to her mouth as the words died away on my lips, then beckoned to me. I went to her; and, putting her hand on my left shoulder, she whispered into my left ear to know if we were safe from overhearing.