Before this election began you were guilty of gross impertinence in writing a letter to my wife,--to her extreme annoyance and to my most justifiable anger.Any gentleman would think that the treatment you had already received at her hands would have served to save her from such insult, but there are men who will never take a lesson without a beating.And now, since you have been here, you have presumed to offer to shake hands with me in the street, though you ought to have known that Ishould not choose to meet you on friendly terms after what has taken place.I now write to tell you that Ishall carry a horsewhip while I am here, and that if Imeet you in the streets again before I leave the town Ishall use it.
FERDINAND LOPEZ
Mr Arthur Fletcher.
This letter he sent at once to his enemy, and then sat late into the night thinking of the threat and the manner in which he would follow it up.If he could only get one fair blow at Fletcher his purpose, he thought, would be achieved.In any matter of horsewhipping the truth hardly ever gets itself correctly known.
The man who has given the first blow, is generally supposed to have thrashed the other.What might follow, though it might be inconvenient, must be borne.The man had insulted him by writing to his wife, and the sympathies of the world, he thought, would be with him.To give him his due, it must be owned that he had no personal fear as to the encounter.
That night Arthur Fletcher had gone over the Greshambury, and on the following morning he returned with Mr Gresham.'For heaven's sake, look at that!' he said, handing the letter to his friend.
'Did you ever write to his wife?' asked Gresham, when he read it.
'Yes,--I did.All this is dreadful to me:--dreadful.Well;--you know how it used to be with me.I need not go into all that, need I?'
'Don't say a word more than you think necessary.'
'When you asked me to stand for the place I had not heard that he thought of being a candidate.I wrote and told her so, and told her also that had I known it before I would not have come here.'
'I don't quite see that,' said Gresham.
'Perhaps not;--perhaps I was a fool.But we needn't go into that.At any rate there was no insult to him.I wrote in the simplest language.'
'Looking at it all round I think you had better not have written.'
'You wouldn't say so if you saw the letter.I'm sure you wouldn't.I had known her all my life.My brother is married to her cousin.Oh heavens! we had been all but engaged.I would have done anything for her.Was it not natural that I should tell her? As far as the language was concerned the letter was one to be read at Charing Cross.'
'He says that she was annoyed and insulted.'
'Impossible! It was a letter that any man might have written to any woman.'
'Well;--you have got to take care of yourself at any rate.What will you do?'
'What ought I to do?'
'Go to the police.' Mr Gresham had himself once, when young, thrashed a man who had offended him, and had then thought himself much aggrieved because the police had been called in.But that had been twenty years ago, and Mr Gresham's opinions had been matured and, perhaps, corrected by age.'
'No; I won't do that,' said Arthur Fletcher.
'That's what you ought to do.'
'I couldn't do that.'
'Then take no notice of the letter, and carry a fairly big stick.
