[Paddy O’Connell writes a brief letter from Jack Straw’s Castle at
Hampstead.]
Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead,
October 27, 1905.
Dear Harry,--I’ve no mind to be writing letters on a Friday, but as we
can’t blot that same day out of the week, anyway, and there’s good
luck to come in this world as well as bad, here goes for a trial of
it.
I am still fixed upon this wild heath, though God knows why. You tell
me neither to come nor to go, so here I am for the middle course, as
the car-driver said when he put me into the canal for fear of spoiling
the banks with his wheels. Little Martha I see every day, and we’ve
had more than one lunch and dinner at the foreign cafés down West, on
the off-chance that we might do some good to you--though this is not a
matter that should be named to her preaching man of a husband. What a
poor thing he is, to be sure--preaching on a text of St. Paul about
marriage directly her back is turned, and giving it out to the flock
that celibacy is the blessed state! She’ll give him celibacy when she
gets home! Faith, I’d like to be there when his ears are boxed.
Your letter speaks of no good spirit, my boy, and I’m not wondering at
it. But you’ll be good enough to believe this--that if any harm had
happened to Mimi, your wife, the news of it would have come home to
you before this time. She’s well, and she’s kept away from you by some
villain or the other who would profit by her story later on. That’s my
certain belief, and nothing will shake it. A girl as clever as Mimi
the Simpleton is not going to stay in any cage while her wit can
squeeze through the bars thereof; and we’ll be hearing from her, with
any luck, before the year is very much older.
So I say to you, cheer up. Hope’s a good friend, even if he does treat
us uncivilly sometimes. Many the time, after taking ten in a bunker,
have I forsworn the pastime of golf, and resolved, by my father’s
name, to take to hoeing turnips. But here I am, at a sixteen handicap
still, and willing to back my luck against the company should occasion
offer.
I would tell you that we put the advertisement offering your thousand
pounds for news of Mimi in all the papers, and have had perhaps a
thousand answers. This London is a funny place, and as many rogues as
fools in it. Sometimes I think that half the world’s gone mad. Is our
dear little girl a wild animal that people should be writing to you as
they are writing? Every crank with a bee in his bonnet, every
wide-eyed lunatic who thinks his sister passed somebody like Mimi in
the streets is spoiling good paper and pestering us. And then the
newspapers themselves, still at it with their theories, and the great
doctors of learning, and the scholars from the colleges, and the
lunatics that have escaped out of Bedlam, all large in print with
their stories of what happened, and their advice gratis to the rest of
the company. ’Tis a very pandemonium of suggestion, and not one idea
worth a silver threepenny among the whole of them.
Meanwhile, Harry, my boy, will you be letting Paddy O’Connell know
what he can do for you? ’Tis no pleasant holiday-time--ten days for
eleven guineas--that I’m spending in these parts.
Picture your friend walking on the lonely heath, and hunted about by
vulgar men in buttons if he so much as drives a golf ball into a
perambulator. This is my occupation--and when I’m tired of it, there
are the horse-riders to be seen on the tan, and the motor-cars, which
the police are fining.
As for the horsemen, we’ve no such riding in Ireland, and wonderful it
is to see, especially the elderly gentlemen on the six-and-sixpenny
nags, who take a little horse exercise for the liver’s sake. One of
them fell off by the pond yesterday, and I caught his steeplechaser
for him. Such a sorry nag never came out of a knacker’s yard in
Ireland; but the man himself was shivering like a half-drowned dog
when he came up, and sovereigns would not have persuaded him to mount
again.
“Did ye see that?” he asks me; “did ye see him buck?”
“Why,” says I, “not exactly. But if you’ll get up and make him do it
again, I’ll tell you what it is.”
He was very angry at this, and wouldn’t hear of it.
“I’m not a jockey,” says he. “Do you suppose I’m going to ride a
buck-jumper? Wait till I get back--I’ll tell Boulder what I think of
him!”
“Just clap your hands,” says I to this, “and the old horse will run
home by himself. ’Tis a fine afternoon for walking, and good for the
spirits. I would be taking the second hour first next time you go out.
’Tis cheaper in the long run.”
You can see any amount of these fellows on this “blasted heath,”
Harry, but not much else that I know of. And I am staying here because
my old friend asked that same of me; and, if he wishes it, I’ll remain
until they wake me and afterwards. As for the little house, the
curious folk still come to stare at the place, and Sunday finds them
loafing about half the day, just as though there were to be another
bad business for their amusement, and a wrong done to them should it
not happen. Yesterday one of them pushed his nose so far into the
garden that for a halfpenny I would have punched it.
He turned out to be a French waiter from a little hotel in Soho, and
had much intelligence of his own; so I fell to some agreeable talk
with him, and was much struck with his remark that the real way to get
at the truth would be by offering money to one of the gang to turn
King’s evidence. To be sure, we’d have to learn the name of the fellow
first--but that’s to be done, I am persuaded--and if you would hear
the Frenchmen for yourself write to Monsieur Jean Rabasseur at the
Café Bousson, Soho. A man of some intellect who might be useful to
us.
Meanwhile, for the sake of all that’s charitable, either summon me to
Paris or send me back to Ireland. Your letters speak of a poor spirit;
and if there is one man in this land of Sassenachs who could cheer you
up, ’tis that same rogue Paddy O’Connell. So send for me and have done
with it. Martha leaves London to-morrow, and then I’ll be lonely
indeed. “I must go back to my dear husband,” says she; and when I
offered to send for him to London, ’twas just “Heaven forbid, Mr.
O’Connell! would you spoil my holiday?”
So you see, women are much the same all the world over; and, if ever I
would marry a wife, I’ll look her up and down first, and ask myself
some questions. Is she the kind to go in double harness, and how will
she run without blinkers? Is it my money she’s after, or the beautiful
face I see in the glass? Be sure, I’ll be hard to convince. ’Tis
rarely a husband’s face the women see in that same mirror; and lucky
for the husbands that they have no gift of second sight--all of which
goes to the making of that incurable old bachelor--Your friend,
Paddy.
P.S.--There was a letter came to-day from the office of the “Daily
Bulletin.” I’m sending it on. You’ll see it’s marked “urgent,” so
don’t answer it until you get it. Meanwhile, the others are going to
the waste-paper basket, especially the bills, which have an ugly look,
and should not be left lying about any house to annoy a man.