Chapter XXXIX

[We hear of Paddy O’Connell in a letter to Martha Warrington at Cambridge.]

Dear Mrs. Warrington,--I am careful, you see, not to say “Martha,” lest this letter should fall into your husband’s hands--bad cess to him! and he be making a fool of himself, as you say that he would. So it shall just be “Mrs. Warrington,” though laughing up my sleeve I am all the time, and you the same, I do not doubt.

Well, my dear, I am having the blazes of a time in this wilderness of a place, and all for my friend’s sake; though, God knows what use I am to him any more than the policeman at the corner, who has had many a good glass of my whisky, and would like many another. Harry says ’tis to Paris I am to go presently, though what for the old gentleman himself would be hard put to it to guess. The last news I have from him speaks of the dreadful things we read in the papers this morning. It would be clear that the little witch is gone from the people that have had charge of her, and that this wicked story of wrong and mystery is no clearer to us than ever it was. But so far as it goes, we must be content with it; for I would no more doubt her than I would doubt my sister Clara, and whatever she has done has been done for the best--of that I am sure.

Did it never occur to you that this pretty child may have a history out of the ordinary? It has been in my mind since the first day of our meeting, and as more in my mind than ever to-day. Who was her father? but, more important to ask, what was her mother’s name? Did you never hear tell of the airs and graces of her, the pretty ways that were strange in a showman’s tent, and the dignity which no man ever humbled? We may have lost good manners in this twentieth century, Mrs. Warrington, but we haven’t lost the good sense which tells us whether our fathers were gentlemen or villains, and this is an instinct we’ll keep yet awhile.

I say that Mimi Gastonard is the daughter neither of a showman nor a peasant, and if my surmise is not correct, put Paddy O’Connell down with the fools.

To speak of things better understood, I don’t wonder to hear that you were annoyed about the horse-racing. ’Tis no consolation to have missed those same great races, the Cæsarewitch and Cambridgeshire, and you so near to the course. Your cousin John evidently knows a good thing, and his win upon the double event must have gladdened your heart. But I’m sorry to hear that he put but a sovereign apiece on for you, and he might well have made it a tenner. Man is a curious animal, and always niggardly about his own kills. I shall tell Mr. John that same if ever I meet him.

Well, Martha, I miss the piquet we used to play on quiet afternoons, and that’s a certainty. This god-forsaken Hampstead puts pistols in my hands every evening, and takes them out again when the sun shines in the morning. Just to think that the riding has begun in Ireland, and me, Paddy O’Connell, doomed to a six-shilling hack and a gallop as far as your arms can reach. Yesterday, in Harry’s interest, I lunched with a newspaper man at the Savoy Hotel, and was much disappointed to find that he drank water. “’Tis a little gas one needs in politics,” says I, “and champagne’s the stuff;” but he would have none of it. I should tell you that he has big notions of Harry’s literary gifts, and wants some more letters out of him. I told him a story or two about the parish priest of Glendalough, who, when the Bishop told him that golf was sending men to the devil fast, replied that he wondered at it, for they did it mostly on sloe gin. After this, he asked me to write a series of papers on “a humorist in the mountains of Ireland.” But I declined immediately. “’Twould be over the heads of your people,” says I, “and that’s where all good Catholics should be in this life or the next.”

I expect to go to Paris to-morrow or the day after, and will write you when I get there. There is a parcel of books at the house, sent to you by your husband; but you don’t seem to have opened them. Will I forward them on or give them to the heathen? Advise me by return.

And with kind regards, please find me, yours, as per last,

Paddy O’Connell.

There was a curate man got hold of me in Hampstead, and took me to a Christian Endeavour meeting. He persuaded me to put on the boxing gloves, and one of his flock gave me a precious black eye. ’Twas a Christian endeavour surely, and cost me a bandage. So I’m only seeing half of this letter, which you can tell your husband if it should fall into his hands.