Chapter XXIII: Paddy O’Connell shares the news with his sister Clara

4, The Walk, Hampstead, London, N.W.,
September 5th, 1905.

My dear Clara,--’Twas a rough crossing I had, and it found me by no means unwilling to step from the sea to the land. But I’d be no good Irishman if I complained of a little rough water between me and the Sassenach; and so here I am and, God be good to me, in the midst of as wild a company of men as ever drank wine out of a flower vase or cooked their beef on a spirit stove. And, faith, they do drink and eat from the morning until the night, and, after that, from night to the morning again--as the garden bears witness, for I swear ’tis full already of the bottles, and beginning to be heaped up at that.

There was a man at Euston who clapped a false bag over my valise and stepped into a cab with it; but I saw him just in time, and jumped into the cab with him. He appeared by no means pleased at this; and when the driver asked “Where to?” “Why,” says I, “to Scotland Yard.” You should have seen the fellow alight, leaving me in possession of a machine to steal bags which might well be a fortune to me.

But, Clara, I am to tell you of my visit to Hampstead, where Harry is--and not of any bags at all--which I now proceed to do as well as these hilarious folks will let me, and as coherently as the madness of it makes possible. You should know that I found Harry in a little house on the top of a hill by London, at a place they call Hampstead; a great, big, bare heath of a wilderness where the folks go to be happy on Sundays, and which is large enough for the drunken ones to fall down and sleep convenient. This is the famous Hampstead Heath, wherefrom, they tell me, you can see the dome of St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, though little of one or the other did I see, but only a great big hole full of smoke and the roofs of railway stations, and the factory chimneys sticking up above it.

The house itself is a bit of a place not much bigger than a cabin on a bog. Some man, who has a wonderful taste for the arts, painted it the colour of the great Atlantic Ocean, and there are creepers all over the face of it, and some poor little roses that are pining for the country but will get no chance of air yet awhile. As for the interior of the place, well, there we have Harry’s wit at work, for the rascal has made it as like his little house in Paris as money and pains could do; and, as if this were not enough, he has invited over a troop of the rogues that he used to know, and filled them with good red wine until there isn’t a man among them who could tell you whether he’s himself or his neighbour. But here I get ahead of the story, and that, my dear Clara, will never do.

I arrived at the house about six o’clock of the evening. No man could have mistaken the place, for a great tri-colored flag was flying out of the bedroom window, and a crowd stood before the windows to hear the Chevalier Villefort singing the French song which has the fine classic chorus--“Fifine, elle est doloreuse.” When I knocked at the door, loud enough to shake the door off its hinges, such a shout went up as should have brought the fire engines to the street. And what a rushing to the door, what cries of “Entrez--herein--kum een”--what hands thrust out to drag me along--what a tossing up of my bag--God help the whisky--what a pandemonium! A rat fallen among terriers would not have been so shaken to the very roots as your poor Paddy. Faith, I think that about forty of them were sitting on my chest at a time, though it proved afterwards that there were but five in the house, including the little witch that Greuze should have painted, and she was as wild as any of them, and as ready for the frolic.

Well, they pulled me into a room that was conveniently furnished with a piano that had but two or three notes to it, and chairs that had no proper backs to them; and, seeing that I was hungry and famished after the journey, they set a bottle of curaçoa and a yard of bread before me and bade me fall to.

The place itself was so thick with smoke that I was hard put to it to say whether I was looking out of the front of my head or the back; and I was in no way surprised to hear that they had made a night and a day of it, and proposed to double the term. As for the men, their clothes would have made the fortune of a circus. Harry himself wore a suit of travelling checks loud enough to knock down a nigger minstrel. The long-whiskered beggar-man, Georges Oleander, had an old golfer’s red coat to his back and a sea-green waistcoat for its own brother; the lady-killer Villefort, a real Frenchman as you see them in Paris and a gentleman as well, he wore a frock-coat and a rose like a cabbage in his buttonhole; while as for the little witch Mimi, she was dressed in a frock down to her knees and a pair of crimson stockings bright enough to light the candles. What it all meant--the house, the people, the noise--your Paddy knew no more than the people in the street. What was worse, no man among them seemed able to tell him.

“Finish your breakfast first,” says Harry--it was then about half-past six o’clock of the afternoon--“and then we can lay the cloth for dinner. I’ve ordered it from the confectioner’s, and we’re going to have a real good time. Upon my word, Paddy, you were an old brick to come--whatever should we have done without you?”

“Why?” says I, wondering still more, “and what do you propose to do with me?”

“Why, to make you sing ‘Finnigan’s Wake’ to begin with, and then the next best song you can remember. Come, Paddy, no heel-taps--you must be thirsty, and I wish we had something else but curaçoa. They’ve drunk all the wine and I’ve sent for some more.”

“From what I perceive,” says I, “they have already drunk what you’ve sent for. Is it a wake or a wedding, Harry? You didn’t send for me all the way from Ireland to join in a smoking-concert. I’ll not believe it at all.”

He said “Hush,” and, presently, when the others were fallen to their games again, he took me out into the bit of a garden, where there was a fountain and a satyr--though the gentleman had a clay pipe in his mouth instead of a flute, and someone had sketched the picture of a broken bottle just where he should have worn his tail. Here we had a moment’s privacy, and here I began to get at the truth of it.

“Harry,” asks I, “will ye answer me a plain question--what are all these tipsy gentlemen doing here, and why have you brought that little lady among them?”

Well, he took me by the arm and began to walk me up and down the narrow path.

“They’re not tipsy,” says he, “they’re just glad, Paddy. It’s a long story, my boy, and a good one. But I’ll have to tell it you in two minutes.”

“Ay,” says I, “and it’s the story of the child, no doubt.”

He nodded his head. He’s a fine handsome lad, with a wicked wisp of brown curls over his handsome forehead, and two clear blue eyes which should go deep into any woman’s heart. And he never looked handsomer than he did this night.

“Her story, of course, Paddy. I have won her by a trick, my boy. Don’t say now that I was wrong to go to my cousin’s house, for it was little Martha who put the first notion of it into my head.”

“Did the parson call you out?”

“No, he called me in lest the neighbours should see.”

“Did he complain of his ship coming home--the poor devil of a man?”

“It was a little awkward, certainly--but it saved me, Paddy. I just ran over to Cromer to see Mimi, and then came on to London to fit up this house. What will appeal to her, said I, will be a new Maison du bon Tabac.”

“You’ve plenty of it here. ’Twould take a telescope to see across the room.”

He was a little cross with me for interrupting him, and, in faith, I was as curious to hear his story as he to tell it. So I just held my tongue and let him run on freely.

“I determined if I could,” he said, “to find Mimi a little house in London, which would speak to her of the old days in Paris and lead her to forget that she is among strangers in a strange country. So I fitted up this place. You see what kind of a place it is, Paddy--just a replica of the old villa on the Butte, with the very furniture that we used to laugh at there. Then I sent for my friends, and the good fellows came at once. How could they keep away?”

“You paid their fares, Harry?”

“Yes, and old Georges had an accident with his at the Cabaret of the Tête Noire--so I had to send it twice. But they came, Paddy, and we began to live the old life just as we lived it at Montmartre--and then we wrote to Mimi; we all wrote to her, and we sat down and waited for her. My God! if you had known what those days of waiting meant to me.”

He was deeply moved, and my heart went out to him. I have spoken to you before of his great love for this child--and, to be sure, it is an honest man’s devotion, full of fine, chivalrous thoughts and so utterly unselfish that it must bring him to abject poverty by and by. This, however, was not the time to speak of it.

“But she came to you, Harry?” said I; “she came to you, man?”

“God be thanked, she did, Paddy. It was last night--these fellows had all gone off to dine in Soho at a French café no Christian man has ever heard of. I was alone in the house--all my spirit had gone, for Mimi’s letter seemed to say that she would not come. All the prophets of evil whispered in my ears and promised me misfortunes while I waited. I lived half a lifetime of poverty, distress, and disappointment--alone in the dark of the garden looking down upon the lights of London, and asking if they hid Mimi from my sight. You know what moods like these can be--how we seem robbed of every shred of hope, how we say that good fortune will never visit us again--wish almost that our lives were lived. That was my case for two long hours--oh, my dear Paddy, may I never live such hours again.”

“And then,” says I, “then, my dear Harry, you were lifted up to heaven in a jiffy. Elijah didn’t beat you at the flying.”

He laughed like a boy at this, while he squeezed my arm as though he would press all the human kindness out of me and add it to his own store. Trust a man in love to be a miser with his sympathies.

“As true as gold, Paddy,” says he, “she came at nine o’clock, just when I had put pistols in the balance with laudanum, and was watching the scale. I can hear the wheels rolling on the gravel now--ah, the roll of the wheels that carry your mistress to you, is there any sweeter music in life?”

“Did she come alone, Harry?”

“The man they call Jack Bendall brought her. I gave him a ten-pound note for himself and a fiver each for the others of the company. Of course, I didn’t guess at first that Mimi was in the cab, and my heart started to beat like a fire-pump. She was ill, I said, gone back to France perhaps--or even dead. Then, Paddy, I heard her voice! Think of that, old boy, I heard her voice!”

“’Twas what was said in the Dublin Courts last week, when Mary Wentworth went for a divorce from old Mike. She heard a voice in the parlour--a female voice----”

“Oh, be serious, Paddy, be serious.”

“The very words the Judge used. Do you mean to marry her now you’ve got her here, Harry?”

“Am I a rogue, Paddy? I’d have married her this morning if the priest would have done it.”

“The priest--what priest?”

“Why, the one from the little French church. Old Georges went to fetch him, but we’d had so much wine that Georges couldn’t explain himself, and the priest thought there was someone sick, and came immediately. When he got there, it was just about half-past five in the morning. The room was full of bottles and tobacco-smoke, and Villefort was playing ‘All the little sheep and lambs,’ and singing it as well. When the good father came in and saw Mimi fast asleep in an armchair and the rest of us looking as though we had been boiled in old Bordeaux, he just bolted, Paddy.”

“Ah,” says I, “it’s astonishing how the ecclesiastical mind revolts at originality. Ye couldn’t call him back, Harry?”

“No, I didn’t try. We’re to have a special license now and to be married in the morning. Mimi’s sent for her clothes, and I’ve got a frock-coat coming over.”

“Will you live in this place when it’s done?”

“Ah, that’s what I don’t know. You see, I had to catch her by a trick, but I won’t keep her that way, for we have our livings to get. That’s a task I must set about at once.”

“You were for setting about it two years ago. I remember you bought a quire of paper and two nibs, and were for writing the History of the Palais Royal. You got as far as a sketch of Cardinal Richelieu dining at the Ritz Hotel, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Paddy, but it’s a great scheme, and I shall finish it some day.”

“Some day is the Bohemian’s yesterday. He’s always going to do great things yesterday. Harry, my boy, you’re taking the devil’s own risk; there are few men who would countenance you, I suppose.”

“But you, you, Paddy, you don’t forbid it?”

“I’ve wished it from the start. It may be the making of you--if it isn’t the ruin. I’d sooner see you married to this little girl than dangling at a married woman’s apron-strings as you were in Paris. Riches don’t go for much if they can’t do better than that for you, Harry.”

“Oh, but you’re talking of things that have been. I don’t want to hear about them--heaven knows, there are sad moments enough.”

“Why sad moments?”

“I cannot tell you. It’s just obstinacy. Sometimes I tell myself that even if I marry Mimi, I shall not keep her with me. I’m afraid of her own past, afraid of my own future. Consider what gipsy lives we have led. How are we to go on living them, how am I to hope that she will settle down to the hum-drum things of a suburban existence? And, of course, I dare not take her back to Paris; you know how foolish that would be.”

“Put the thought out of your head. You would be a madman to play with it. As for keeping her--well, a man who cannot keep a woman who loves him isn’t worth his salt. I’ll not hear it. You have no right to be talking like this--not to-night anyway. Begin to speak of dark things when the sun is setting on your happiness. You can keep it above the horizon as Joshua did if you set out to slaughter the heathen who are the masters of your idleness. Work, Harry--that’s the best friend in a man’s home.”

He did not answer me; in truth, he had no chance. The dinner made its appearance, and we all sat down to it--such a merry company that must have recalled all the days of the old Kit Kat Club, and of the wild dogs that frequented the same. For you must know, Clara, that this Hampstead place has seen the poets Keats and Leigh Hunt, who was another writing man, and Charles Dickens, to say nothing of the prize-fighters who had their training quarters in these parts, as Harry told me over the dinner-table; and I’ll warrant there has been many such a carouse as we held this night, and with reasons not half so good. Meat and drink, song and dance--the men breaking up the chairs and tables; all sorts of music, wine enough to float a man of war, French ways and manners of it--ay, a night and a morning, too, for the bride fell fast asleep in the arm-chair just when the sun came up, and there were three of us on the benches in the garden when they cried the milk in the streets. Nor will I write this to our shame. We were children of the highway for the nonce. God knows, there is too much of brick and mortar in the world.

You may ask me, Clara, how I, a decent man in my own country, and respected in County Wicklow--as any clergyman who plays golf will bear witness--how I can encourage this tipsy life or give moral support to my old friend, Henry Gastonard, when he is the victim of it. I’ll tell you in a word. He will go to the devil if he does not marry this little witch, and the way he has set out to marry her is the only one by which his journey’s end can be reached.

Think of the child’s life--she who danced in the booths about Paris, she who has been a fortune hunter--God help her!--almost since she was old enough to lisp any words at all. Would such a pretty waif and stray go to a man who had red plush breeches about him and solid silver on his table? Would she enter a house of double doors with a marble staircase beyond? Never, I’ll swear, to her life’s end. He has won her through her heart, and worthily won her too.

They were married this morning at ten o’clock at the French Consulate, and afterwards by the man that keeps the Registry. The rest of us were half asleep, but we kept it up to the end, and when we left them at ten o’clock of the night and they were alone together in the house, we stood by the window a moment to watch him kiss her very tenderly before we went down the hill to the pit where London lies. She is now his wife--God bless her pretty face!--though what their future is to be, whether a fair way in a garden of roses or all the sorrow of the children of Alsatia is more than any man may dare to say--let alone your affectionate brother,

Paddy.