Chapter XXXVI

[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.