CHAPTER XIII.--Of the Supper at the Palace that followed.

My Lady's feasting on the little fish, which had almost rivalled the Prince Caracciolo's miraculous draught, did not seem to interfere with her appetite at the State dinner, or perhaps I should say supper, which took place at the Queen's Palace in Naples as soon as the guests could conveniently reassemble after repairing the ravages of so hot and wet a day. She ate with her accustomed heartiness, as I was in a position to see, for she had me to sit next to her. Will was there officially as the Admiral's interpreter--an office which later was more often filled by My Lady herself, during the Admiral's long spell ashore in the Two Sicilies. She had said to Her Majesty, in her good-natured way, "Let Tubby and Josiah come; they can't babble away any secrets, for they will not understand one word we say." She had quite forgiven Josiah for his brutal and at that time undeserved assault on her friendship with his step-father, and he was her devoted slave again: indeed, there was nothing small about My Lady,--even her vanity was too great to charge with pettiness. I may say here that Josiah was mighty careful that night; and I do think it was from fear of forgetting himself again, although such a very young officer was not likely to exceed before the company in which he found himself. For Her Majesty had invited all the captains that could be spared both for the expedition to Pompeji and for the banquet; and all around us, mingled with the beauties and most trusted nobles of the Neapolitan Court were such men as Troubridge and Alexander Ball, the pick of Nelson's captains, men whom any other Power would have been glad to welcome as commanders-in-chief at that moment--such was their martial fame for the handling of their ships, and stomach for fighting.

I don't know which was the finer sight, the scene in the ante-room under the huge rock-crystal chandeliers with their hundreds of wax tapers, or the scene at the crescent-shaped dining-table groaning beneath its rich services of the precious metals, fashioned by such gold-and-silversmiths as the Florentine, Cellini. In the former, the modest but self-reliant carriage of the men, who had made all Europe ring with the fame of their deeds, contrasted finely with the noble figures and carriage of the young Italian beauties with whom Her Majesty loved to surround herself--women who held themselves as upright as though they had borne on their heads the Greek water-pitchers of antique mould which their peasant women carry to the wells. They had, too, the strength and health on which the daughters of our country squires pride themselves, and, yet, more grace than ever we saw in the great French ladies when Will and I were with the Allies at the occupation of Paris fifteen years or more later, gone there to see the great sight, like so many of the gentry round Dover. And just as for carriage there are no women to be matched with these Southern Italians, so in many cases it was with their skins, which were exquisitely velvety and clear, and showed the rich crimson of their blood through the transparent brown. I noted, and I think Will noted particularly, the difference between Donna Rusidda and them; for her skin, while just as transparent and beautiful in texture, was more of an olive hue, and showed the blood but rarely and at moments of great agitation--though her cheeks then, to use the words of the old song, were "as ruddy as a peach" for all their brownness. But I thought, and I could swear that Will thought, that this very circumstance conferred upon her visage a kind of distinction.

Most of the ladies could by now speak a little, a very little English--a gift of tongues which was not shared by many of the officers, much as they had served in Italian waters. However, between them they could make words enough to serve while they were assembling for the banquet, and each keeping an eye on the door by which Her Majesty was to enter.

At the dinner the grace of the women was not shown to the full, nor were the attitudes of the officers so characteristic; but to make up for this came the rolls of hearty laughter. For the Queen on these occasions by no means maintained a royal reserve, for all the haughtiness in her nature. Maria Carolina loved fine men, and loved above all things to see them _themselves_, and I judge that she was not averse _to seeing them themselves_ for the further reason that it enabled her to gauge their value as instruments.

Those who had known him long, like Captain Troubridge, could not help noting, even now, the change that was coming over the Admiral. Formerly he was extremely reserved when dining in the presence of ladies, saying but little and drinking no wine until the King's health should be proposed, and always drinking such healths in bumpers. Now he took a little wine during dinner, not wishing, I think, to appear peculiar; and talked very much to My Lady, although he was sitting between her and the Queen. It was, as I have writ, My Lady's whim that I should sit upon her other hand that night, and so I had good opportunity for observing. Will sat on the other side of Captain Troubridge to interpret between him and Her Majesty, while My Lady interpreted for the Admiral. She spoke Italian, and also the Neapolitan dialect, like English; though she could not write her native tongue better than a clever child.

Having so often heard the tradition of his taciturnity at the table, I own I was most astonished at his flow of table talk; for, though he paid My Lady compliments not a few, they were no more than any other officer in his fleet would have paid--certainly no more than such men as Captain Troubridge and Captain Hallowell, who had not his flow of other conversation.

That the Admiral could express himself well, any one who has read his letters published from time to time could not fail to see. He was no maker of epigrams, but he said things so briefly, and so to the point, that one could remember them like epigrams; and, for a seaman, he had a remarkably well-stored mind. A full knowledge of history he considered essential to every commander who would understand his business; and I think that during those years on shore before the battle of St. Vincent, when he was living a sort of farmer's life in his father's parsonage, he must have had the run of a fairly-stocked library and mastered its contents, as it was his wont to master anything he put his mind to. He was likely talking his best, for was he not next to one of the world's most famous beauties in the first days of the friendship to which she had shown herself so well disposed? What I overheard of their conversation I cannot, as one of the Admiral's officers, bring myself to write; not that there was anything that I should blush to repeat on paper, but indeed I could rather write down a man's coarseness than his tenderness, for his tenderness is sacred to the person to whom it is addressed, and his coarseness is mere anathema. But I think I may say something of their appearance, which any one at the table, and servants, could see as well as I. The Admiral had on his battle look. As is well known, when battle was imminent, until the moment for deeds came, after making his dispositions, he would retire and write his last letters and his last wishes, and think of those he loved best, and pray for his country and them. He prayed till the last moment before his actual service as a commander was required; and in after years, when My Lady was wife to him in all but name, the lack of a conventional marriage-tie between them did not prevent that great heart from mingling the woman he loved best with the last prayers which ascended to his Creator. But when the moment came for the round shot to be tearing the decks, and sowing death, the Admiral would be on his quarter-deck all alert, but smiling like a boy playing a game in which he is the best player.

It was that light-hearted boy's look he wore while he sat by My Lady that first night on which I saw them much together.

And as for her, she had just that gracious look of the woman, who has been the unconquered Amazon all her life, when she has found the man for whom she will surrender. Not that My Lady had ever been the unconquered Amazon, but she had every womanly graciousness in her repertoire, and could use them with a generousness, which made them genuine, as the occasion demanded. And this was the finest and best of them. That My Lady was capable of a passionate devotion had been shown by her fidelity to Mr. Greville. The Admiral was exactly qualified to take her whole heart. To her imagination, her pride in her country, her pride of vanity, he appealed more highly than was possible for any other man living, and to her generous affectionate woman's heart, which must have been bruised by Mr. Greville's desertion and weary of Sir William's weakness, his chivalrousness, and the affectionate _esprit de corps_ which made every man who ever served with him his slave, came as a balm and a cordial.

These two were all in all to each other that night. The Admiral, as I have said, alert and smiling, was rarely brilliant for him; My Lady, with beautiful eager face, and every now and then a sort of happy sob heaving in that exquisite white bosom, was hanging on his words.

Though I said they were all in all, the Admiral had perforce to address himself to Her Majesty sufficiently, and from time to time to call out some toast or make some rally to his captains.

It seemed to me, who was only a boy then, that Her Majesty was of a purpose devoting her whole attention to Captain Troubridge, to whom she had given the second place of honour on her left hand--he being the most distinguished of the captains present. I did not think then all I am about to say, for I knew less of life, and I had not the light of what has happened since to guide me; but, testing the proceedings with these acids, I should say that the daughter of Maria Theresa was desirous on the one hand of giving Lady Hamilton full play in subjugating the Admiral, and that on the other hand she was desirous of bringing all the influences of her beauty, her womanly charm, her splendid birth, and her queenhood, to bear upon the bluff British sailor, who was of all the least amenable to women's wiles, and who was in the future always to be in the balance against the influence of herself and Lady Hamilton with the Admiral. Speaking from memory and experience, I picture Captain Troubridge as a little uneasy in this bower of Armida. But there was one thing which made him to some extent the willing servant to the Queen of Naples,--Captain Troubridge was a fighting man, and he had the highest admiration for the courage, resourcefulness and patriotism of the woman who, married to a _roi fainéant_, made such a good fight to maintain her kingdom's place among the nations.

As for myself, the dinner was rather mortifying, for My Lady, after placing me next to her, forgot my existence, until a lackey, breaking a crystal goblet on her right hand between her and me, in the attempt to fill it without disturbing her colloquy with the Admiral, made a portentous crash which attracted the attention of the whole company, including even My Lady; who, suddenly becoming aware of my existence, and feeling that she had treated me rather badly, put her arm round me and kissed me, with everybody looking. The blood rushed to my head until I must have looked like the merchant ensign; and, to add to my confusion, the lady on the other side, who was the wife of an Italian prince and could not speak a word of English, seized the cue, and almost took me on her knee in her attempt to make up for her deficiency as a linguist.

At last that terrible banquet ended, and the company scattered about the reception-rooms and the terrace overlooking the sea. The Admiral and My Lady went out on the terrace. Her Majesty remained in the great room, which she had recently had decorated with frescoes in the style discovered in the excavations at Pompeji. She made rather an ostentation of talking to Neapolitans, and principally to the ladies among them; the subject of their conversation, from their looks, being the manly beauty of the English officers gathered under the centre chandelier--a splendid group. In true English style the captains stood together talking--no doubt of Service matters, just as they would when they met almost daily on the flagship or in the Admiral's anterooms at My Lady's palace.

Will, his services not being required by the Admiral, was standing a little way from them. He was English, and therefore wished to do what the English did, and yet had too much pride and too good manners to go nearer to his superior officers; and I humbly took up my position by him, not expecting him to talk to me upon such an occasion, but from sheer not knowing what else to do.

In a very few minutes My Lady and the Admiral returned, My Lady leading the way straight up to the captains. She had by this become so intimate with Her Majesty that there was no need for her to observe Court etiquette on entering the presence of the Sovereign. With the captains she was so natural and unaffected that even Captain Troubridge was melted.

Hardly had she taken up her position when Donna Rusidda, having spoken with Her Majesty, upon whom she was attending, and having made her courtesy with the grace of a Neapolitan girl and a daughter of generations of courtiers, glided across the room to bring, as it seemed, a message to her Ladyship, though she lingered afterwards. I cannot say whether My Lady had an instinct against her. She was all smiles, as was her wont at such a gathering. But she did not lay her hand on the girl to detain her, or improvise any of the excuses for which she had such a happy invention; and after a few minutes of awkwardness Donna Rusidda was departing, a little crest-fallen, when her eye fell upon Will, almost in her path, just off the edge of the group. She motioned him to her.

"Ah, Signor Vill," she said in her own language, her face lighting up with a smile even more beautiful than My Lady's, for it was rarer: "why do not all your English officers speak Italian, as you do? They spend their lives in guarding the coasts of our country, and yet do not understand any of her children."

Will was quite gallant in his reply: I know what he said. I think we must have discussed every incident of our life in the Two Sicilies during the long years in which we have been neighbours and brothers-in-law on the bleak coast of Kent. He said, "Because they have no charming lady to take them in hand. I had a beautiful young mother, who was brought up in Mediterranean ports, and has never ceased to pine for the sunshine."

What a devoted woman Donna Rusidda was we were to know only too well afterwards; but she was not above a woman's curiosity or caprice, and, the Admiral being as usual the feature of the evening, it was not long before she had manœuvred to get the weather side of Will, where, while she was talking to him, she could see the Admiral, and where the great man's eye might occasionally light on her.

She answered his polite little speech with a charming smile, but said nothing. So he continued,--

"But you must try harder to learn my language too. You must not say Signor Vill, but Signor Will."

"Vill."

"No, no; not Vill, but Will."

"Oh yes: Ou-ill--Signor Ou-ill."

"No, not Signor Ou-ill, but Signor Will."

"Signor W-W-Will."

"Yes, that is it: Will."

"Well, Signor W-Will," she said coquettishly--"I have to prepare my mouth for it, or I cannot say it--I cannot stay with you. I have given my message, and must go back to Her Majesty."

"Oh, Donna Rusidda!" he began reproachfully.

"Oh, what, Signor W-Will?"

"Are you not waiting for some answer from My Lady?"

"Perhaps. Have you a message which you wish the Signora Hamilton to give to me?"

"None that I would not rather give myself."

"But I cannot take messages from a midshipman."

"I am not a midshipman," he said, with injured dignity.

"You have risen very quickly."

"I was always a lieutenant, from the very first time you saw me."

"You were never a lieutenant when you inflicted that insult on me: that was a midshipman's trick."

"Will you never forget or forgive?"

"I have forgiven it, or how would the affair have ended?"

"Yes, indeed you did, Signorina," said Will, with warm gratitude in his voice. "Will you forget it?"

"I am not sure that I can promise that; but I have offered you my friendship."

"That is the same thing," he said, giving her such a look as I should not have thought any woman could resist. In all that assemblage there was no one with high breeding and high courage writ so plainly on his face; and he was so young, so beautiful, so fair in colouring. Even his eyes, his proud blue eyes, had for once lost their hardness.

"No, it is not the same thing; I do not want to forget it."

"Then I am not completely forgiven?"

"Oh yes, you are, Signor W-Will. You are already almost my best friend."

"Who is _the_ fortunate person?"

"You forget that I have a brother and an uncle," she said, with a touch of dignity.

Will was relieved a little, and his relief was completed when she broke into a sweet soft smile, which he poetically compared to me (after his second glass of Madeira) to the moon on the Bay of Naples.

"Tell me, Donna Rusidda, what are to be the privileges of friendship?"

She looked at him with a concern which was to me more engaging than her archness. "Oh, Signor W-Will, you are not speaking as an Italian would speak, are you?"

"I would rather die," he replied, with a respectfulness which must have gone straight to her heart, for she was so grateful, so frank.

"I mean the right of coming to me and speaking to me as you would to an English girl; of staying by me if we are left, instead of instantly quitting; of walking with me as you would with an English girl."

"But your brother?"

"I will speak to my brother. Besides, having once accepted you as my lover--even the Sicilian custom would give me the right. There is no jilting by men in Sicily, so that is not provided for in our customs."

"Princess," said Will, "there is nothing in all the Two Sicilies I value like this permission of yours. But I am strangely sensitive about codes, and your brother and I have fought--and he has generously taken me back into his friendship."

"You gave him his life."

"That is true; but that only wiped out the debt I had already incurred. All that he has done since is a free gift, which leaves me much again in his debt."

"What do you wish me to do, then?" she asked almost petulantly.

"I wish your brother to repeat your offer to me."

She made a charming figure as she stepped lightly and quickly across the dark polished floor, gleaming with the reflection of the countless wax-lights, to where, at the far end of the room from the Queen and her ladies, her brother was talking to a group of noblemen and State functionaries. The light shining above and the dark shining below made just the right foils for the soft white satin of the gown that hung in graceful folds from her shoulders, which, like her small well-shaped head, were thrown slightly back. She went up to her brother with a look which bespoke sisterly confidence and affection, mingled with respect for the head of the house, but quite unembarrassed. And she had not spoken with him above a minute or two when they came to where Will was standing.

"I shall leave you to Ruggiero," she said, preparing to trip away.

"Please don't," he said. "I mean, please don't leave us. We are not quarrelling, are we, your Highness?"

"Hardly quarrelling," replied the Prince: "I have come to repeat what my sister said. As you have been engaged, our Sicilian customs permit of it, and I would trust your honour before my own. You are already my friend, and you can be my sister's friend, as you would be the friend of an Englishwoman. She has told me what you both take that to mean, and, if any one chooses to misinterpret it, I have a sword."

Will was explaining, with genuine feeling, his sense of the honour thus paid him, when the Admiral spied the Prince and his sister in their friendly colloquy with him, and stepped forward to speak to the former. It fired the Admiral's generous soul to see the handsome terms upon which the combatants of the duel he had frustrated were with each other.

"Your Highness," he said, "will you and the Princess do me the honour of taking breakfast on the flagship, when I return from Caserta, and meeting the General? A small affair--not a reception of Her Majesty by the British Admiral. My Lady here will receive the ladies; we have a raree to show you--the little bird which flew on board just before my late battle, stayed with us all through the action, and is now free of my cabin. She eats in the prettiest way from my table, and is, I take it, the most potent and companionable familiar in the whole history of magic."

The Prince expressed his thanks with elaborate Italian politeness and Southern warmth. It was the first time he had spoken with the Admiral since that memorable night in the Palazzo Mont' alti; and being a man of high courage, and the last of a martial Norman race, the glory of the Admiral's great deeds appealed with unusual strength to his imagination.

As the Prince of Favara advanced to meet the Admiral, his sister's face was full of mischievous laughter. She had in truth created rather a difficult position for herself, and the best way out of it was to consider Will discomfited, which in truth he was, though events jumped so well with his wishes.

"Well, Signor W-Will, did I not tell you?"

"No, I don't think you did."

"Well, I meant to tell you, and you knew I knew, and do not look so frightened. I do not expect you to propose marriage to me this very minute, or even to carry me off for a midnight walk; but I am tired--yes, tired of our desperate Sicilian custom of all the ladies standing round that dais at one end of the room, as there, with Her Majesty and all the gentlemen round the dais at the other end, as there--where you see the Duke, the Prince, the three Counts, and the Ministers. You English take the centre of the floor. You do not have customs like we do, which can only be cheated by intrigues."

"Is it very dreadful of you to be standing here?"

"Yes, very dreadful; but not so dreadful as it would be if my brother, who is my only protector, were not here. And I am going to rebel, and take English leave."

"But if you were English you would go to places with a married lady friend; and when you arrived you would leave her, and never find her again until you wished to escape from somebody or to go home. Perhaps the Ambassador's wife?"

"No, no," she said quickly.

"Oh, I see," he said: "you know her story."

"It is not that. All Naples knows her story, and many married ladies in Naples have the same story about themselves. It does not affect her position in society. People would only laugh and think one mad if one attacked her for that. No, it is not that: it is simply--well, I do not wish to be beholden to her. My brother has always been my protector, and he has a sharp sword. And there is Donna Marziani. You English know what is meant by a _duenna_, do you not?" she rattled on in her voluble Italian. She and Will spoke Italian because it was as easy to him as English, and English was so difficult to her.

"Need we stand here, then? Why should we not go and sit on one of those stiff-backed couches with the gilt lions' legs which line the room?"

"Let us: it will be my declaration of independence."

When she and Will moved off in their silent revolution--a revolution almost as shocking to Sicilian ideas as the late horrible Revolution in France--My Lady, seeing me stranded like a fish on the rocks at low water, called to me, "Tubby!" which I resented on so formal an occasion; nor had I yet forgiven her for having kissed me at the dinner-table, though there were plenty--the Admiral himself, as I knew after, and was not too young then to suspect--who would have taken a kiss from Lady Hamilton under even more arduous conditions. Nor was I best pleased to find that she had only called me to lay her hand upon my shoulder in a caressing way while she pursued her conversation with the Admiral.

He was saying: "This confounded fellow cannot move without five carriages. I have formed my opinion; I heartily pray I may be mistaken." And then they went on talking about five-and-thirty thousand of the finest troops in the world; forty thousand levies; sending a legion of five thousand by sea; and General Championnet and the spread of pernicious opinions, till I should have yawned if I had not had, as I thought, Captain Troubridge's eye on me. I suppose I must have yawned, for the Queen sent one of her ladies to fetch me. I stole a glance at Will, but he had no eyes save for Donna Rusidda, who was, as I thought, merely angling with him. Then I looked at the captains, but they were far too occupied with great matters to think of a midshipman, unless he was rampantly misbehaving himself. I did not, somehow or other, look at the Admiral: I felt I did not mind him; and then I let myself be spoilt by the beautiful Court ladies--I, who am now a plain half-pay captain, living on a very modest income in a cottage at Walmer.