[Paddy O’Connell replies to Mimi’s letter.]
The Headland Hotel, Portrush, Ireland,
October 2nd, 1905.
Dear Mimi,--Your pretty letter came to me in confidence, my dear, or I
would have answered you with a telegram. Though, to be sure, what a
man puts in a telegram is private enough, neither he nor anyone else
being able to made head nor tail of it sometimes. What I wanted to say
to you was just this--that you are a foolish little girl to write to
me as you did, though there’s no one I’d sooner hear from, and no one
whose letters I’d be readier to answer.
What’s all this nonsense about the men that watch you, Mimi? Don’t the
men always watch a pretty woman anyway? I’ll not flatter you at all,
but if it’s the watching that you’re after, come over to this golfing
country, and you shall have five and fifty men on the first tee to see
you off, and as many of the women behind them to declare you’d be
pretty if it wasn’t for your “faytures.” So have done with your
nonsense! I’ll be writing Harry this very day and giving him a word of
my mind about all that you tell me. He’s made strange friends in his
days of seedtime, and they’re above the ground now at the harvest.
That’s the way we men have ’em, my dear. We sow friendships in our
youth and often enough reap thistles in our old age.
Harry was wise to take you away, and I hope he’ll keep you in the same
place. There’s nothing like change, though precious little of that
same comes the way of Paddy O’Connell. To me the world is all the
same, my dear--just a great grass field with a lot of sand-pits
therein, and your Paddy in one of them for a certainty.
What d’ye think the fellows here had the impudence to do this morning?
Why, to follow me and old Colonel Willis when we were playing a round
of the golf. He’s a very wicked habit of using bad language, which I
have no mind to be listening to, and when I saw a crowd about the
first tee, I asked them what they supposed they had come out to see.
And what do you think they answered me? “Why,” says one of them, “we
haven’t come here to see--we’ve come here to listen.” Be hanged to
their impudence.
There’s one point in your letter which I haven’t spoken of, Mimi, and
I speak of it now unwillingly. ’Twould be about the Lea woman. Be sure
that Harry will see no more of her. I say it, and Paddy O’Connell
makes no mistakes in a matter of this kind. He’s done with her--he
wished to be done with her a year ago, but she wouldn’t let him. And
ask yourself this, my dear--when a man has got the woman he wants, is
he likely to want the woman he hasn’t got? Think no more of it, I say.
Be off with him to all the places where there’s music to be heard and
bright people to be seen, and let me hear of the brave little girl I
used to know in Paris, and will never forget.
So here’s my love to you wrapped up in a bit of a letter and posted in
the great Irish country. ’Tis no great spirit I’m writing in, but
you’d never understand all the trouble that comes to a man who’s
taking three on the greens where he ought to take two, and can never
hold a hand at the cards without somebody insulting him. To the devil
with them all! They put two aces of hearts in the pack of cards I
played Bridge with last night, and me not discovering it until the
second rubber. Would ye wonder that I walked out of the window and
banged it after me.
I write to Harry by this post. If he shouldn’t show you the letter,
don’t pretend to know what’s in it.
But it’s wisdom, my dear, and that’s a rare commodity in these
days.--God bless you--and,
Paddy O’Connell.