“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.