Chapter XXVIII

[The Same Author addresses Henry Gastonard at the Hotel Metropole, Brighton.]

The Headland Hotel, Portrush, Ireland,
October 2nd, 1905.

Dear Harry,--What’s all this now about your trouble at home and the men that are looking after you? Is it dreams, or are spirits about? I hear from your angel of a wife that some nonsense has come into both your heads. And I haven’t the patience to hear it--so there’s the truth.

Now, you have got to be up and doing, and acting the man’s part. Remember, you have made as odd a marriage--but as wise a one--as any man that ever put a ring in his waistcoat pocket, and couldn’t find it there when the parson asked him. Mimi is a little wild animal that you took from the prairie--as soft as silk, as gentle to your hand; but, man, with the blood of the prairie in her veins. Remember this every day you get up from her side--she’s the daughter of savages, and her birthright will cry out for a hearing sometimes.

What are all these fears of hers? Are they not the alarm of the gazelle which sniffs a lion on the sky line, and would be moving? What are the mad outbreaks you speak of--the frenzied desire for change and movement? Are they not born of the same impulse which sends a wild pony scampering through the forest and keeps him at it until he’s exhausted? Be very patient with her. The man who would keep a wild bird well should not begrudge the money he spends for a decent cage--and a large one to boot.

To be plain with you, Harry, I’d be less troubled about your good little wife if I had a better story to tell of her husband. You say that you are planning a scheme which will surprise me presently. Did you ever hear tell of the South Sea Bubble where a rogue made a fortune by advertising a business “presently to be disclosed?” Paddy O’Connell is not the one to be putting his hopes for you in any company like that. Be up and doing; do you realise that in a few months you’ll have no more than a bank clerk, and with a power of spending which would shame the Jam of Rorypore?

Did I tell you that I had a letter from America which gave me some concern for a few days? A fellow wrote me that he had discovered a gold mine, and, being an old friend of my father’s, had put me down at the beginning for fifty shares. “These,” says the man, “are now worth about a thousand apiece, and there is gold banked against your name in New York to that amount.” All that I had to do was to send him a cheque for five hundred and forty pounds, the unpaid call on the shares. Bedad, I’d have done it but for McCarthy, the solicitor, who’s the finest nose in Ireland for scenting out a “do,” and was on the rat before he’d got half way out of his hole.

“Why,” says he, “this is the gold brick over again.”

“What brick?” asks I, astonished.

“The gold brick,” says he; “if you go out there, he’ll show you a lump of gold as big as a Kerry flint, and there’ll be lead inside of the same.”

“You’ve no trust in humanity,” says I--and “Devil a bit,” says he--so I’m keeping my money, though I’ve heard of a little scheme for shipping Irish horses to the gold-fields of Alaska, which should be worth something if worked by honest men. Ay, and that’s the rub. Henry, my boy, where do the honest men hide themselves these days? I’d sooner look for an old ball in a bunker full of stones than try to find one of the same.

You must be coming to Ireland and bringing Mimi with you. We’ll show her the wild man’s country together, and, perhaps, be teaching her the golf. ’Tis true that neither of us can play, but, my dear boy, the best teachers in the world are those who know nothing themselves, as you’ll observe both in the realms of art and literature, to say nothing of those of sport. Bring the child over and let’s cheer her up awhile. I’ll warrant there’ll be men enough to watch her; but she won’t be afraid of them, devil a bit.--Your friend, as ever,

Paddy.