[The Same Author addresses Henry Gastonard at the Hotel Metropole,
Brighton.]
The Headland Hotel, Portrush, Ireland,
October 2nd, 1905.
Dear Harry,--What’s all this now about your trouble at home and the
men that are looking after you? Is it dreams, or are spirits about? I
hear from your angel of a wife that some nonsense has come into both
your heads. And I haven’t the patience to hear it--so there’s the
truth.
Now, you have got to be up and doing, and acting the man’s part.
Remember, you have made as odd a marriage--but as wise a one--as any
man that ever put a ring in his waistcoat pocket, and couldn’t find it
there when the parson asked him. Mimi is a little wild animal that you
took from the prairie--as soft as silk, as gentle to your hand; but,
man, with the blood of the prairie in her veins. Remember this every
day you get up from her side--she’s the daughter of savages, and her
birthright will cry out for a hearing sometimes.
What are all these fears of hers? Are they not the alarm of the
gazelle which sniffs a lion on the sky line, and would be moving? What
are the mad outbreaks you speak of--the frenzied desire for change and
movement? Are they not born of the same impulse which sends a wild
pony scampering through the forest and keeps him at it until he’s
exhausted? Be very patient with her. The man who would keep a wild
bird well should not begrudge the money he spends for a decent
cage--and a large one to boot.
To be plain with you, Harry, I’d be less troubled about your good
little wife if I had a better story to tell of her husband. You say
that you are planning a scheme which will surprise me presently. Did
you ever hear tell of the South Sea Bubble where a rogue made a
fortune by advertising a business “presently to be disclosed?” Paddy
O’Connell is not the one to be putting his hopes for you in any
company like that. Be up and doing; do you realise that in a few
months you’ll have no more than a bank clerk, and with a power of
spending which would shame the Jam of Rorypore?
Did I tell you that I had a letter from America which gave me some
concern for a few days? A fellow wrote me that he had discovered a
gold mine, and, being an old friend of my father’s, had put me down at
the beginning for fifty shares. “These,” says the man, “are now worth
about a thousand apiece, and there is gold banked against your name in
New York to that amount.” All that I had to do was to send him a
cheque for five hundred and forty pounds, the unpaid call on the
shares. Bedad, I’d have done it but for McCarthy, the solicitor, who’s
the finest nose in Ireland for scenting out a “do,” and was on the rat
before he’d got half way out of his hole.
“Why,” says he, “this is the gold brick over again.”
“What brick?” asks I, astonished.
“The gold brick,” says he; “if you go out there, he’ll show you a lump
of gold as big as a Kerry flint, and there’ll be lead inside of the
same.”
“You’ve no trust in humanity,” says I--and “Devil a bit,” says he--so
I’m keeping my money, though I’ve heard of a little scheme for
shipping Irish horses to the gold-fields of Alaska, which should be
worth something if worked by honest men. Ay, and that’s the rub.
Henry, my boy, where do the honest men hide themselves these days? I’d
sooner look for an old ball in a bunker full of stones than try to
find one of the same.
You must be coming to Ireland and bringing Mimi with you. We’ll show
her the wild man’s country together, and, perhaps, be teaching her the
golf. ’Tis true that neither of us can play, but, my dear boy, the
best teachers in the world are those who know nothing themselves, as
you’ll observe both in the realms of art and literature, to say
nothing of those of sport. Bring the child over and let’s cheer her up
awhile. I’ll warrant there’ll be men enough to watch her; but she
won’t be afraid of them, devil a bit.--Your friend, as ever,
Paddy.