"Started!" exclaimed I,--"which way?"

"On the high-road to Munich."

"She left no letter,--no note for me?"

"No, sir."

"Poor thing,--overcome, I suppose. She was crying, wasn't she?"

"No, sir, she looked very much as usual, but hurried, perhaps; for she nearly forgot the ham sandwiches she had ordered to be got ready for her."

"The ham sandwiches!" exclaimed I, and they nearly choked me. "I 'm going to be shot for a woman that, in the very extremity of her ruin, has the heart to order ham sandwiches!" That was the reflection that arose to my mind, and can you fancy a more bitter one?

"Are you sure," asked I, "the sandwiches weren't for Madame Virginie, or the little dog?"

"They might, sir, but my Lady desired us to be sure and put plenty of mustard on them."

This was the d.a.m.ning circ.u.mstance, Tom. She was fond of mustard,--I had often remarked it; and just see, now, on what a trivial thing a man's happiness can hang. For I own to you, so long as I was strong in what I fancied to be her good graces, I could have fought the whole regiment of Blues; but when I thought to myself, "She doesn't care a bra.s.s farthing for you, Kenny Dodd; she may be laughing at you this minute over the ham sandwiches,"--I felt like a drowning man that had nothing to grapple on. Talk of unhappy and injured men, indeed! Wasn't I in that category myself? Not even a husband's selfishness could dispute the palm of misery with _me!_ In the matter of desertion we were both in the same boat, and for the life of me, I don't see what we could have to fight about. I never heard of two sailors rescued from shipwreck quarrelling as to who it was lost the vessel!

"The best thing for us to do," thought I, "would be to try and console each other; and if he be a sensible, good-hearted fellow, he 'll maybe take the same view of it. I 'll ask him and my Lord to dinner; I'll make the landlord give us some of that wonderful old Stein berger that was bottled three hundred years ago; I 'll treat them to a regular Saxon dish of venison with capers washed down with Marcobrunner, and if we 're not brothers before morning, my name is n't Kenny Dodd."

I was on "these hospitable thoughts intent," when Lord Harvey Bruce was again announced. He had found out an old sergeant-major of artillery, who for a consideration would undertake the duties of my second,--kindly adding that he and his family, a very large one, would also attend my obsequies.

I interrupted his Lordship to remark that an event bad just occurred to modify the circ.u.mstances of the case, and mentioned Mrs. Gore Hampton's departure.

"I really cannot perceive, sir," replied he, "that this in any way affects the matter in hand. Is my friend less injured--is his honor less tarnished because this unhappy woman has at last awoke to a sense of her degraded and pitiable condition?"

I thought of the sandwiches, Tom, but could say nothing.

"Are you less his greatest enemy on earth, sir?" cried he, pa.s.sionately.

"Now listen to me patiently, my Lord," said I. "I 'll be as brief as I can, for both our sakes. I don't value it one rush whether I go out with your friend or not. If you want a proof of what I say, step into the little garden here and I 'll give it to you. I 'm neither boasting nor bloodthirsty, when I say that I know how to stand at either end of a pistol; but there's nothing to fight about between us."

"Oh, if you renew that line of argument," cried he, interrupting me, "It is totally impossible I can listen."

"And why not?" said I. "Is it a greater satisfaction to your friend to believe himself injured and dishonored than to know that he is neither one nor the other?"

"Then why did you come away with her?"

"I can't tell," said I, for my head was quite confused with all the discussion.

"And why call yourself by _my_ name at Ems?"

"I cannot tell."

"Nor what do you mean by the att.i.tude in which I found you when I entered the room?"

"I can't tell that, either," cried I, driven to desperation by sheer embarra.s.sment "It's no use asking me any more. I have been living for the last five or six weeks like one under a spell of enchantment. I can no more account for my actions than a patient in Swift's Hospital. I 'm afraid to commit my scattered thoughts to paper, lest they might convict me of insanity. I know and feel that I am a responsible being, but somehow my notions of right and wrong are so confused, I have learned to look on so many things differently from what I used, that I 'd cut a sorry figure under cross-examination on any matter of morality. There's the whole truth of it now. I 'd have kept it to myself if I could; I 'm heartily ashamed at owning to it--but I can't help it--it would come out. Therefore, don't bother me with, 'Why did you do this?' 'What made you do that?' for I can give you no reasons for anything."

"By Jove! this is a very singular affair," said he, leaning over the back of a chair, and staring me steadfastly in the face. "Your age--your standing in society--your appearance generally, Mr. Dodd, would, I feel bound to say, rather--" Here he hesitated and faltered, as if the right word was not forthcoming; and so I continued for him,--

"Just so, my Lord; would rather refute than fix upon me such an imputation. I 'm not very like the kind of man that figures usually in these sort of cases."

"As to _that_," said he, cautiously, "there is no saying. I am now only speaking my own private sentiments, the result of impressions made upon myself as an individual. Courts of Law take their own views of these things; and the House of Lords has also its own way of regarding them."

The words threw me into a cold perspiration from head to foot, Tom!

Courts of Law! and the House of Lords! was n't that a pretty prospect for an enc.u.mbered Irish gentleman? A shot, or even two, at twelve or fourteen paces, cannot be a very expensive thing, in a pecuniary point, to any man, and there 's an awkwardness in declining it if others are anxious to have it, so that you appear ungracious and disobliging. But Westminster Hall and St. Stephen's, Tom, is mighty different. I won't speak of the disgrace that attends such a proceeding at my time of life, nor the hue-and-cry that the Press sets up at you, and follows you with to your own hearth,--"the place from whence you came," and where now your wife waits for you--to perform the last sentence of the law. I won't allude to "Punch" and the "Ill.u.s.trated News," that live upon you for three weeks; but I 'll just take the thing in its simplest form,--financially. Why, racing, railroads, contested elections, are nothing to it. You go to work exactly as Cobden says France and England do with their armaments: Chatham launches a seventy-four, and out comes Cherbourg with a line-of-battle ship,--"Injured Husband," secures Sir Fitzroy Kelly; "Heartless Seducer," sends his brief to c.o.c.k-burn. It's a game of brag from that moment; and there's as much scheming and plotting to get a hold of Frank Murphy as if he was the knave of spades! It matters little or nothing what the upshot of the case may be; you may sink the enemy, or be compelled to strike your own flag; it does n't signify, in the least; the damages of the action are fatal to you.

Now, Tom, although I never speculated in all my life as to figuring in an affair like this, these considerations were often strongly impressed upon me by reading the newspapers, and I bad come to the conclusion that a man should never think of defending an action of this kind, no more than he would a pet.i.tion against his election, and for the same reason.

Since, although not actually guilty in the one case or the other, you are certain to have committed so many indiscretions,--written, maybe, so many ridiculous letters,--and, in fact, exposed yourself so much, that if you cannot keep out of sight altogether, the next best thing is, let the judgment go by default. I say this to show you that the moment my Lord threw out the hint about law I had made up my mind from that instant.

"I sincerely wish," said he, after some deliberation, "that I could hit upon any mode of arranging this affair; for although I own you have made a strongly favorable impression upon me, 'Dodd,'"--he called me Dodd here, quite like an old friend,--"we cannot expect that Hampton could concur in this view. The fact is, the whole thing has got so much blazed abroad,--they are so well known in the fashionable world, both home and foreign,--she is so very handsome, so much admired, and he is such a charming fellow,--the case has created a kind of European _clat_.

Looking at the matter candidly, there may be a good deal in what you have said, but as a man of the world, I am forced to say that Hampton must shoot you, or sue for a divorce. I am well aware that whichever course he adopts many will condemn him. In the clubs there will be always parties. There may spring up even a kind of _juste milieu_, who will say, 'Now that poor Dodd is dead, I wonder if he really _was_ guilty?'"

"I protest I feel very grateful to them, my Lord," said I. But he paid no attention to my remark, and went on,--

"If vengeance be all that a man looks for, probably the law of the land will do as much for him as the law of honor. You ruin a fellow, irretrievably ruin him, by an action of this kind. You probably remember Sir Gaybrook Foster, that ran off with Lady Mudford? Well, he had a splendid estate, did n't owe a shilling, they said, before that; they tell me now that some one saw him the other day at Geelong, croupier to a small 'h.e.l.l.' Then there was Lackington, whom we used to call the 'Cool of the Evening.'"

"I never knew one of them, my Lord," said I, impatiently, for I did n't care to hear all the ill.u.s.trations of his theory.

"Lackington was older than you are," continued he, "when he bolted with that city man's wife,--what's his confounded name?"

"I am shamefully ill-read, my Lord, in this kind of literature," said I, "nor has it the same interest for me that it seems to afford your Lordship. May I take the liberty of recalling your attention to the matter before us?"

"I am giving to it, sir," said he, gravely, "my best and most careful consideration. I am endeavoring, by the aid of such information as is before me, to weigh the difficulties that attach to either course, and to decide for that one which shall secure to my friend Hampton the largest share of the world's sympathy and approval. I have seen a great deal of life, and all that I know of it teaches the one lesson,--distrust, rather than yield to, first impressions. Awhile ago, when I entered this room, I would have said to Hampton, 'Shoot him like a dog, sir.' Now, I own to you, Dodd, this is not the counsel I should give him. Now, understand me well, I neither acquit nor condemn you; circ.u.mstances are far too strong against you for the one, and I have not the heart to do the other."

"This talking is dry work, my Lord," said I. "Shall we have a gla.s.s of wine?"

"Willingly," said he, seating himself, and throwing his gloves into his hat, with the air of a man quite disposed to take his ease comfortably.

Our host produced a flask of his inimitable Steinberger, and another of a native growth, to which he invited our attention, and left us to ourselves once more. We filled, touched our gla.s.ses, German fashion, drank, and resumed our converse.

"If any man could have told me, twenty-four hours ago, that I should be sitting where I now find myself, and with _you_ for my companion, I'd have told him to his face he was a calumniator and a scoundrel! This time yesterday, Dodd, I 'd have put a bullet through you, myself."

"You don't say that, my Lord?"

"I do say, and repeat it, I believed you to be the greatest villain the universe contained. I thought you a monster of the foulest depravity."

"Well, I 'm delighted to have undeceived you, my Lord."

"You _have_ undeceived me!--I own to it. I believe, if I know anything, it is human nature. I have not been a deep student in other things, but in the heart of man I have read deeply. I know your whole history in this affair as well as if I was present at the events. You never intended seduction here."

"Nothing of the kind, my Lord,--never dreamed of it!"

"I know it; I know it. She got an influence over you,--she fascinated you,--she held you captive, Dodd. She mingled in your thoughts,--she became part of all your most secret cogitations. With that warm, impulsive nature of your country, you made no resistance,--you could make none. You fell into the net at once,--don't deny it I like you the better for it,--upon my life I do. Don't suppose that I 'm Archbishop of Canterbury or Dean of Durham, man."

"I don't suspect, in the least," said I.

"I'm no humbug of that kind," said be, resolutely. "I'm a man of the world, that just takes life as he finds it, and neither fancies that human nature is one jot better or worse than it is. Hampton goes and marries a girl of sixteen; she is very beautiful and very rich. What of that? She leaves him--and what becomes of the wealth and beauty? She is ruined,--utterly ruined! He has his action at law, and gets swingeing damages, of course. What's the use of that? Will twenty thousand--will forty--would a hundred thousand pounds serve to compensate him for a lost position in life, and the affection of that charming creature? You know it would not, sir. Don't affect hesitation nor doubt about it You know it would not."