I have n't told you how she "landed" me, for I 'm not above confessing that I was as bad as the rest; but the truth is, Tom, I don't really know how I was caught. I am too old for these blandishments; they no more suit me now than a tight boot or a runaway hack; one gets too rheumatic and too stiff in the joints for homage after fifty; and besides that, there's a kind of croaking conscience that whispers, "Don't be making a fool of yourself, Kenny James!" and, between you and me, Tom, 't is well for us when we 're not too deaf to hear it.
Besides this; Tom, it is only the fellows that never were in love when they were young that become irretrievably entangled in after life. If you want to see a true sexagenarian victim, look out for some hang-dog, downcast, mopish creature, or some suspectful, wary, crafty, red-haired rascal, that thought every woman had a trap laid for him. These are your hopeless cases; these are the men that always die in some mysterious manner, and leave wills behind them to be litigated for half a century.
The Kenny Dodds of this world come into another category. They knew that love and the measles are mildest in young constitutions, and so they began early. Maybe it was in a firm reliance on this that I felt so easy about the widow,—if widow she be; for, to tell the truth, I don't yet know if Mr. Gore Hampton be to the fore or only has left her a memory of his virtues.
I leave you to guess what impression she made upon me; for the more I go on trying to explain and refine upon it the less intelligible do I become. One thing, however, I must say,—these charming women are the ruin of Irishmen! Our own fair creatures, with a great share of good looks, and far more than ordinary agreeability, are not so dangerous as the English, and for this reason: in their demands for admiration they are too general; they—so to say—fire at the whole covey; now, your Englishwoman marks her bird,' and never goes home till she bags it!
We were to have left Cologne that morning for Bonn, but so agreeably did the time pass, that we did n't start till evening, and even then it was quite tearing ourselves away; for the delightful widow—for widow I must call her till she shows cause to the contrary—hourly gained on us.
She was obliged to wait there for some lawyers or men of business that were to follow her with papers to sign; and although Lord George did his best to persuade her that she might as well come on with us,—that Bonn was only fifteen miles farther,—she was firm, and said that "Old Mr. For-dyce was a great prig, and when she had once named Cologne for their meeting, she would have travelled from Naples rather than break the appointment." I own to you, there was a tenacity and determination in all that which pleased me. Maybe the great charm of it was that it was very unlike what I 'd have done myself!
The whole way to Bonn we talked of nothing but her, the discussion being all the more unconstrained that Lord George had stayed behind, and was only to come up the next morning. We were agreed upon a number of points: her beauty, her elegance, the grace and fascination of her manner, and her high breeding; but we took different views as to her condition,—Mrs. D. and the girls thinking that she was married, James and I standing out for widowhood. Lord George joined us the next day; and although he could have resolved our doubts at once, Mary Anne stopped all inquiry, by assuring us that nothing was so hopelessly vulgar as to display any ignorance about the family or connections of people of rank. "If she be in the peerage, we ought to know her, and all about her. She is, of course, some Augusta Louisa, b. 18 and dash; m. to the Honorable Leopold Conway Gore Hampton, third son, and so on." In a word, Tom, we had the whole family tree before us, from its old gnarled root to its last bud, and ours the shame if we were ignorant of its botanical properties!
A few quiet humdrum days of Bonn existence had almost obliterated our memory of the charming widow, and we were beginning to "train off" our attachments to fashionable life, when, in all the splashing and whip-cracking of foreign posting, up dashes the dark green britschka to our hotel one fine evening; and before we could well recognize the carriage, the fair owner herself was making the tour of the Dodd family, embracing and hand-shaking, as age and sex dictated!
I wish any physiologist would explain why the English, that are so proverbial for a cold and chilling demeanor at home, grow at once so cordial when they come abroad. Whether it be the fear of the damp, or the swell mob, I can't tell, but everybody in England goes about with his hands in his pockets, and only nods to a friend when he meets him; whereas here you start with a grin at fifty yards off, then off goes your hat with a flourish, that, if you have any tact, what with shaking your head, and looking overcome with delight, occupies you till you come up with him, when your greeting grows more enthusiastic,—lucky if it does not finish with a kiss on both cheeks.
I suppose it was the influence of habit betrayed me, for, in a fit of abstraction, I took the charming widow into my arms, and saluted her as if she were Mrs. Dodd. If this was in London, Tom, or even in Dublin, there 's no saying what mischief might not have grown out of it. I might have been fighting duels every day for the last week, not to mention still more formidable encounters of a domestic nature; but just to show you what the Continent does for us,—how instinctively, as it were, we rise above the little narrow prejudices of our insular situation,—she threw herself into a chair and laughed immoderately. Ay, and droller again, so did Mrs. D.! To tell you the truth, Tom, I could n't well believe my senses when I saw it. It would seem to be the same in morals as in murder,—you can dignify the offence by the rank of your victim; for if it had been one of the maids at home, Mrs. D. would have left my face like a piece of music paper!