[In which Paddy O’Connell advised his friend Harry to pay a visit.]
Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead,
October 21st, 1905.
Dear Harry,--I have no telegram from you this morning, and am
remaining here. Be good enough to wire upon receipt of this to say if
you would sooner have me in Paris or London--for ’tis little I care
where, so long as I may be of service to you.
Your letter to the daily papers has done a power of good. I had no
idea that any friend of mine could write with so much feeling and good
sense, and I congratulate you upon it. The town, I am told, continues
to talk of little else--but you have given the affair a new turn, and
the newspaper editors have more than they can do with the letters that
come to them.
Now, my boy, I am going to speak very plainly to you. Had you asked me
a month ago whether you should go to Madame Lea’s house, I would have
turned my back upon you for the question, and put it out of your power
to ask me another for many a long day.
But this is not my advice this morning. There is something lying at
the back of my head which may be common sense or may be a fool’s
burden; but it is crying to me all the time that a woman may be the
heart of this mystery, and to a woman you may well go for that news
which no man is able to give you.
I say, go to this Lea d’Alençon and hear what she has to tell you.
When your dear wife is found, ’twill be Paddy O’Connell who will make
his advice good and relieve you of the burden of it. Go to her, and
ask her plainly what is the meaning of the postscript to her letter.
She’ll tell you in five minutes. There never yet was a woman born who
could keep good or bad news from the man who meant to have it from
her.
I shall say no more, lest I should put thoughts into your mind and
inspire you with a hope that has no justification in the facts. One
thing I do ask you to believe, and it is this: that if your wife is
alive and well, and I believe her to be both, we shall have a message
from her before many days have run. ’Tis a poor sort of a house which
can keep a clever woman from speaking out of its windows when she has
the mind to be eloquent--and Mimi is no singing bird to be content
with a spoonful of canary seed. We shall hear from her, I say, and the
news will be good news. So go to visit Madame with a light heart--and
be sure you carry yourself well before her--for a woman tells little
to a coward, and this lady may have much to tell.
I would have you to know that your cousin Martha stands with me in
this opinion, and is all for your going to Madame Lea. “’Tis a woman’s
story,” says she, “and a woman must tell it.” I find the little body
mightily concerned about the whole business, and as full of ideas as a
pod of peas. She has been to Hampstead almost every day since I was
here, and we have ransacked your home together for the clues we did
not discover. A livelier companion I would never wish to find, and,
being Arthur’s wife, I forgive her much--even her calling me a fool
for wanting to put an advertisement in the papers advising Mimi that
you are in Paris.
As for Cousin Arthur, there’s a man that has found some heart at last.
I’ll do him the justice to believe that his sympathy is gratis, and
not a return for the seven thousand a year of your money which he
hopes to get in the springtime, and thereafter to preach the Sermon on
the Mount from the neighbourhood of Park-lane. I have here by me, as I
write, a copy of Taylor’s “Holy Living” and a new edition of Smiles’
“Self Help,” which he has just sent down to you. There is also a slip
of texts underlined, with which I take leave not to trouble you. It is
well meant, and it would be sinful for us to mock him because he wears
a Roman collar and is a little less human than the rest of us.
Don’t fail to let me have the news. The best part of my own is told by
the newspapers before I can breathe a word of it. They have made a
profitable business of this mystery, and there is not a drawing-room,
a club, or a kitchen which does not discuss it every day and all the
days. For you, yourself, I find the warmest sympathy--and it is
possible that you have already done something to earn the same for
your dear wife. God bless her, wherever she is, and send her back to
us before our hearts are broken.--Your friend,
Paddy O’Connell.
P.S.--I have just sent a telegram to an editor man asking him what the
devil he means by an article in his paper this morning suggesting that
Mimi is shielding somebody, and that’s why the police cannot trace
her. It is necessary to be discreet and patient, but if he doesn’t
contradict it to-morrow, I’ll go down and break every bone in his
body, just to show my good opinion of him.