PEG'S FAREWELL TO ENGLAND
Many and conflicting were Peg's feelings as she went aboard the ship
that was to carry her from England forever.
In that short MONTH she had experienced more contrasted feelings than
in all the other YEARS she had lived.
It seemed as if she had left her girlhood, with all its keen hardships
and sweet memories, behind her.
When the vessel swung around the dock in Liverpool and faced toward
America Peg felt that not only was she going back to the New World, but
she was about to begin a new existence. Nothing would ever be quite the
same again. She had gone through the leavening process of emotional
life and had come out of it with her courage still intact, her honesty
unimpaired, but somehow with her FAITH abruptly shaken. She had
believed and trusted, and she had been--she thought--entirely mistaken,
and it hurt her deeply.
Exactly why Peg should have arrived at such a condition--bordering as
it was on cynicism--was in one sense inexplicable, yet from another
point of view easily understood. That Jerry had not told her all about
himself when they first met, as she did about herself to him, did not
necessarily imply deceit on his part. Had she asked any member or
servant in the Chichester family who and what "Jerry" was they would
readily have told her. But that was contrary to Peg's nature. If she
liked anyone, she never asked questions about them. It suggested a
doubt, and doubt to Peg meant disloyalty in friendship and affection.
Everyone had referred to this young gentleman as "Jerry." He even
introduced himself by that unromantic and undignified name. No one
seemed to treat him with any particular deference, nor did anything in
his manner seem to demand it. She had imagined that anyone with a title
should not only be proud of it, but would naturally hasten to let
everyone they met become immediately aware whom they were addressing.
She vividly remembered her father pointing out to her a certain
north-of-Ireland barrister who--on the strength of securing more
convictions under the "Crimes Act" than any other jurist in the whole
of Ireland--was rewarded with the Royal and Governmental approval by
having conferred on him the distinction and dignity of knighthood. It
was the crowning-point of his career. It has steadily run through his
life since as a thin flame of scarlet. He lives and breathes
"knighthood." He thinks and speaks it. He DEMANDS recognition from his
equals, even as he COMPELS it from his inferiors. Her father told Peg
that all the servants were drilled carefully to call him--"Sir Edward."
His relations, unaccustomed through their drab lives to the usages of
the great, found extreme difficulty in acquiring the habit of using the
new appellation in the place of the nick-name of his youth--"Ted." It
was only when it was made a condition of being permitted an audience
with the gifted and honoured lawyer, that they allowed their lips to
meekly form the servile "Sir!" when addressing their distinguished
relation.
When he visited Dublin Castle to consult with his Chiefs, and any of
his old-time associates hailed him familiarly as "Ted!" a grieved look
would cross his semi-Scotch features, and he would hasten to correct in
his broad, coarse brogue: "Sir Edward, me friend! Be the Grace of Her
Majesty and the British Government--Sir Edward--if--ye plaze!"
THERE was one who took pride in the use of his title.
He desired and exacted the full tribute due the dignity it carried.
Then why did not "Jerry" do the same?
She did not appreciate that to him the prefix having been handed down
from generations, was as natural to him as it was unnatural to the
aforementioned criminal lawyer. The one was born with it, consequently
it became second nature to him. The other had it conferred on him for
his zeal in procuring convictions of his own countrymen, and never
having in his most enthusiastic dreams believed such a condition would
come to pass--now that it was an accomplished fact, he naturally wanted
all to know and respect it.
They were two distinct breeds of men.
Peg had occasionally met the type of the honoured lawyer. They sprang
up as mushrooms over night during the pressure of the "Crimes Act," and
were liberally rewarded by the government--some were even transferred
to the English Bar. And they carried their blatant insistence even
across the channel.
But the man of breeding who exacted nothing; of culture, who pretended
not to have acquired it; of the real power and dignity of life, yet was
simplicity itself in his manner to others--that kind of man was new to
Peg.
She burned with shame as she thought of her leave-taking. What must Sir
Gerald think of her?
Even to the end she was just the little "Irish nothin'," as she had
justly, it seemed to her now, described herself to him. She had hurt
and offended him. In that one rude, foolish, unnecessary question, "Are
you goin' to propose too?" she had outraged common courtesy, and made
it impossible for him to say even a friendly "Good bye" to her. She did
not realise the full measure of the insult until afterwards. She had
practically insinuated that he was following the somewhat sordid
example of cousin Alaric and Montgomery Hawkes in proposing for her
hand because, in a few years, she would benefit by her uncle's will.
Such a suggestion was not only unworthy of her--it was an unforgivable
thing to say to him. He had always treated her with the greatest
courtesy and consideration, and because he did not flaunt his gentility
before her, she had taken unwarranted umbrage and had said something
that raised an impassable barrier between them.
All the way across the Atlantic poor lonely Peg had many opportunities
of reviewing that brief glimpse of English life. She felt now how wrong
her attitude had been to the whole of the Chichester family. She had
judged them at first sight. She had resolved that they were just
selfish, inconsiderate, characterless people. On reflection, she
determined that they were not. And even if they had been, why should
Peg have been their accuser? And after all, is there not an element of
selfishness in every nature? Was Peg herself entirely immune?
And in a family with traditions to look back on and live up to, have
they not a greater right to being self-centred than the plebeian with
nothing to look back on or forward to? And, all things considered, is
not selfishness a thoroughly human and entirely natural feeling? What
right had she to condemn people wholesale for feeling and practising it?
These were the sum and substance of Peg's self-analysis during the
first days of her voyage home.
Then the thought came to her,--were the Chichesters really selfish? Now
that she had been told the situation, she knew that her aunt had
undertaken her training to protect Ethel and Alaric from distress and
humiliation. She realised how distasteful it must have been to a lady
of Mrs. Chichester's nature and position to have occasion to receive
into her house, amongst her own family, such a girl as Peg. And she had
not made it easy for her aunt. She had regarded the family as being
allied against her.
Was it not largely her own fault if they had been? Peg's sense of
justice was asserting itself.
The thought of Alaric flashed through her mind, and with it came a
little pang of regret for the many occasions she had made fun of
him--and in his mother's presence. His proposal to her had its pathetic
as well as its humorous side. To save his family he would have
deliberately thrown away his own chance of happiness by marrying her.
Yet he would have done it willingly and cheerfully and, from what she
had seen of the little man, he would have lived up to his obligations
honourably and without a murmur.
Alaric's sense of relief at her refusal of him suddenly passed before
her, and she smiled broadly as she saw, in a mental picture, his eager
and radiant little face as he thanked her profusely for being so
generous as to refuse him. Looking back, Alaric was by no means as
contemptible as he had appeared at first sight. He had been coddled too
much. He needed the spur of adversity and the light of battle with his
fellowmen. Experience and worldly wisdom could make him a useful and
worthy citizen, since fundamentally there was nothing seriously wrong
with him.
Peg's outlook on life was distinctly becoming clarifled.
Lastly, she thought of Ethel. Poor, unhappy, lonely Ethel! In her
little narrow ignorance, Peg had taken an intense dislike to her cousin
from the beginning. Once or twice she had made friendly overtures to
Ethel, and had always been repulsed. She placed Ethel in the category
of selfish English-snobdom that she had heard and read about and now,
apparently, met face to face. Then came the vivid experience at night
when Ethel laid bare her soul pitilessly and torrentially for Peg to
see. With it came the realisation of the heart-ache and misery of this
outwardly contented and entirely unemotional young lady. Beneath the
veneer of repression and convention Peg saw the fires of passion
blazing in Ethel, and the cry of revolt and hatred against her
environment. But for Peg she would have thrown away her life on a
creature such as Brent because there was no one near her to understand
and to pity and to succour.
Peg shuddered as she thought of the rash act Ethel had been saved
from--blackening her life in the company of that satyr.
How many thousands of girls were there in England today, well-educated,
skilled in the masonry of society--to all outward seeming perfectly
contented, awaiting their final summons to the marriage-market--the
culmination of their brief, inglorious careers. Yet if one could
penetrate beneath the apparent calm, one might find boiling in THEIR
blood and beating in THEIR brains the same revolt that had driven Ethel
to the verge of the Dead Sea of lost hopes and vain ambitions--the
vortex of scandal.
When from time to time a girl of breeding and of family elopes with an
under-servant or a chauffeur, the unfortunate incident is hushed up and
the parents attribute the unhappy occurrence primarily to some mental
or moral twist in the young lady. They should seek the fault in their
own hearts and lives. It is the home life of England that is
responsible for a large portion of the misery that drives the victims
to open revolt. The children are not taught from the time they can
first speak to be perfectly frank and honest about everything they
think and feel. They are too often left in the care of servants at an
age when parental influence has the greatest significance. On the rare
occasions when they are permitted to enter the august presence of their
parents, they are often treated with a combination of tolerant
affection and imperial severity. Small wonder the little ones in their
development to adolescence evade giving confidences that have neither
been asked for nor encouraged. They have to learn the great secrets of
life and of nature from either bitter experience or from the lips of
strangers. Children and parents grow up apart. It often takes a
convulsion of nature or a devastating scandal to awaken the latter to
the full realisation of their responsibility.
During their talk the morning following that illuminating incident, Peg
learned more of Ethel's real nature than she had done in all of the
four weeks she had seen and listened to her daily.
She had opened her heart to Peg, and the two girls had mingled
confidences. If they had only begun that way, what a different month it
might have been for both! Peg resolved to watch Ethel's career from
afar: to write to her constantly: and to keep fresh and green the
memory of their mutual regard.
At times there would flash through Peg's mind--what would her future in
America be--with her father? Would he be disappointed? He so much
wanted her to be provided for that the outcome of her visit abroad
would be, of a certainty, in the nature of a severe shock to him. What
would be the outcome? How would he receive her? And what had all the
days to come in store for her with memory searching back to the days
that were? She had a longing now for education: to know the essential
things that made daily intercourse possible between people of culture.
She had been accustomed to look on it as affectation. Now she realised
that it was as natural to those who had acquired the masonry of gentle
people as her soft brogue and odd, blunt, outspoken ways were to her.
From, now on she would never more be satisfied with life as it was of
old. She had passed through a period of awakening; a searchlight had
been turned on her own shortcomings and lack of advantages. She had not
been conscious of them before, since she had been law unto herself. But
now a new note beat in on her. It was as though she had been
colour-blind and suddenly had the power of colour-differentiation
vouchsafed her and looked out on a world that dazzled by its new-found
brilliancy. It was even as though she had been tone-deaf and, by a
miracle, had the gift of sweet sounds given her, and found herself
bathed in a flow of sweet music. She was bewildered. Her view of life
had changed. She would have to rearrange her outlook by her experience
if she hoped to find happiness.
And always as she brooded and argued with and criticised herself and
found things to admire in what had hitherto been wrong to her--always
the face of Jerry rose before her and the sound of his voice came
pleasantly to her ears and the memory of his regard touched gently at
her heart, and the thought of her final mistake burnt and throbbed in
her brain.
And with each pulsation of the giant engines she was carried farther
and farther away froze the scene of her first romance. One night she
made her "farewell" to England and all it contained that had played a
part in her life.
It was the night before she reached New York.
As she came nearer and nearer to America, the thought of one who was
waiting for her--who had never shown anger or resentment toward
her--whatever she did; who had never shown liking for any but her; who
had always given her the love of his heart and the fruit of his brain;
who had sheltered and taught and loved and suffered for her,--rose
insistently before her and obliterated all other impressions and all
other memories.
As she spoke her "farewell" to England, Peg turned her little body
toward the quickly nearing shores of America and thanked God that
waiting to greet her would be her father, and entreated Him that he
would be spared to her, and that when either should die that she might
be called first; that life without him would be barren and terrible!
and above all, she pleaded that He would keep her little heart loyal
always to her childhood hero, and that no other should ever supplant
her father in her love and remembrance.
When she awoke nest day amid the bustle of the last morning on board,
it seemed that her prayer had been answered.
Her farewell to England was indeed final.
She had only one thought uppermost--she was going to see her father.
BOOK V
PEG RETURNS TO HER FATHER
CHAPTER I
AFTER MANY DAYS
Frank O'Connell stood on the quay that morning in July, and watched the
great ship slowly swing in through the heads, and his heart beat fast
as he waited impatiently while they moored her.
His little one had come back to him.
His fears were at rest.
She was on board that floating mass of steel and iron, and the giant
queen of the water had gallantly survived storm and wave and was
nestling alongside the pier.
Would she be the same Peg? That was the thought beating through him as
he strained his eyes to see the familiar and beloved little figure. Was
she coming back to him--transformed by the magic wand of association--a
great lady? He could scarcely believe that she WOULD, yet he had a
half-defined fear in his soul that she might not be the same.
One thing he made up his mind to--never again would he think of
separation. Never again would he argue her into agreeing to go away
from him. He had learned his lesson and by bitter experience. Never
again until SHE wished it.
Amid the throngs swarming down the gangways he suddenly saw his
daughter, and he gave a little gasp of surprised pleasure, and a mist
swam before his eyes and a great lump came into his throat and his
heart beat as a trip-hammer. It was the same Peg that had gone away a
month ago. The same little black suit and the hat with the berries and
the same bag and "Michael" in her arms.
Their meeting was extraordinary. It was quite unlike what either had
supposed it would be. There was a note of strangeness in each. There
was--added to the fulness of the heart--an aloofness--a feeling that,
in the passage of time, life had not left either quite the same.
How often that happens to two people who have shared the intimacy of
years and the affection of a lifetime! After a separation of even a
little while, the break in their joint-lives, the influence of
strangers, and the quick rush of circumstance during their parting,
creates a feeling neither had ever known. The interregnum had created
barriers that had to be broken down before the old relationship could
be resumed.
O'Connell and Peg made the journey home almost in silence. They sat
hand in hand in the conveyance whilst Peg's eyes looked at the tall
buildings as they flashed past her, and saw the daring advertisements
on the boardings and listened to the ceaseless roar of the traffic.
All was just as she had left it.
Only Peg had changed.
New York seemed a Babel after the quiet of that little north of England
home. She shivered as thoughts surged in a jumbled mass through her
brain.
They reached O'Connell's apartment.
It had been made brilliant for Peg's return.
There were additions to the meagre furnishings Peg had left behind.
Fresh pictures were on the walls. There were flowers everywhere.
O'Connell watched Peg anxiously as she looked around. How would she
feel toward her home when she contrasted it with what she had just left?
His heart bounded as he saw Peg's face brighten as she ran from one
object to another and commented on them.
"It's the grand furniture we have now, father!"
"Do ye like it, Peg?"
"That I do. And it's the beautiful picture of Edward Fitzgerald ye have
on the wall there!"
"Ye mind how I used to rade ye his life?"
"I do indade. It's many's the tear I've shed over him and Robert Emmet."
"Then ye've not forgotten?"
"Forgotten what?"
"All ye learned as a child and we talked of since ye grew to a girl?"
"I have not. Did ye think I would?"
"No, Peg, I didn't. Still, I was wondherin'--"
"What would I be doin' forgettin' the things ye taught me?"
He looked at her and a whimsical note came in his voice and the old
look twinkled in his eyes.
"It's English I thought ye'd be by now. Ye've lived so long among the
Saxons."
"English! is it?" And her tone rang with disgust and her look was one
of disdain. "English ye thought I'd be! Sure, ye ought to know me
betther than that!"
"I do, Peg. I was just tasin' ye."
"An' what have ye been doin' all these long days without me?"
He raised the littered sheets of his manuscript and showed them to her.
"This."
She looked over her shoulder and read:
"From 'BUCK-SHOT' to 'AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION.' "THE HISTORY OF A
GENERATION OF ENGLISH MISRULE, by Frank Owen O'Connell."
She looked up proudly at her father.
"It looks wondherful, father."
"I'll rade it to you in the long evenin's now we're together again."
"Do, father."
"And we won't separate any more, Peg, will we?"
"We wouldn't have this time but for you, father."
"Is it sorry ye are that ye went?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry o' coorse, and GLAD, too, in some ways."
"What made yez come back so sudden-like?"
"I only promised to stay a month."
"Didn't they want ye any longer?"
"In one way they did, an' in another they didn't. It's a long
history--that's what it is. Let us sit down here as we used in the
early days and I'll tell ye the whole o' the happenin's since I left
ye."
She made him comfortable as had been her wont before, and, sitting on
the little low stool at his feet, she told him the story of her month
abroad and the impelling motive of her return.
She softened some things and omitted others--Ethel entirely. That
episode should be locked forever in Peg's heart.
Jerry she touched on lightly.
O'Connell asked her many questions about him, remembering the tone of
her later letters. And all the time he never took his eyes from her
face, and he marked how it shone with a warm glow of pleasure when
Jerry's name occurred, and how the gleam died away and settled into one
of sadness when she spoke of her discovery that he had a title.
"They're queer people, the English, Peg."
"They are, father."
"They're cool an' cunnin' an' crafty, me darlin'."
"Some o' them are fine an' honourable an' clever too, father."
"Was this fellow that called himself 'Jerry'--an' all the while was a
Lord--that same?"
"Ivery bit of it, father."
"And he trated ye dacent-like?"
"Sure, I might have been a LADY, the way he behaved to me."
"Did he iver smile at ye?"
"Many's the time."
"Do ye remember the proverb I taught ye as a child?"
"Which wun, father? I know a hundred, so I do."
"'Beware the head of a bull, the heels of a horse, of the smile of an
Englishman!'"
He paused and looked at her keenly.
"Do you remember that, Peg?"
"I do. There are Englishmen AND Englishmen. There are PLENTY o' bad
Irish, and by the same token there are SOME good Englishmen. An' he is
wun o' them."
"Why didn't he tell ye he was a Lord?"
"He didn't think it necessary. Over there they let ye gather from their
manner what they are. They don't think it necessary to be tellin'
everyone."
"It's the strange ones they are, Peg, to be rulin' us."
"Some day, father, they'll go over to Ireland and learn what we're
really like, and then they'll change everything. Jerry said that."
"They've begun to already. Sure, there's a man named Plunkett has done
more in a few years than all the governments have accomplished in all
the years they've been blunderin' along tryin' to thrample on us. An'
sure, Plunkett has a title, too!"
"I know, father. Jerry knows him and often spoke of him."
"Did he, now?"
"He did. He said that so long as the English government 'ud listen to
kindly, honourable men like Plunkett, there was hope of makin' Ireland
a happy, contented people, an' Jerry said--"
"It seems Misther Jerry must have said a good deal to yez."
"Oh, he did. Sure, it was HE started me learnin' things, an' I am goin'
on learnin' now, father. Let us both learn."
"What?" cried the astonished father.
"O' coorse, I know ye have a lot o' knowledge, but it's the little FINE
things we Irish have got to learn. An' they make life seem so much
bigger an' grander by bein' considerate an' civil an' soft-spoken to
each other. We've let the brutality of all the years that have gone
before eat into us, and we have thrown off all the charm and formality
of life, and in their place adopted a rough and crude manner to each
other that does not come really from our hearts, but from the memory of
our wrongs."
Unconsciously Peg had spoken as she had heard Jerry so often speak when
he discussed the Irish. She had lowered her voice and concluded with
quiet strength and dignity. The contrast to the beginning of the speech
was electrical. O'Connell listened amazed.
"Did the same Jerry say that?"
"He did, father. An' much more. He knows Ireland well, an' loves it.
Many of his best friends are Irish--an'--"
"Wait a minnit. Have I ever been 'rough an' crude' in me manner to you,
Peg?"
"Never, father. But, faith, YOU ought to be a Lord yerself. There isn't
one o' them in England looks any betther than you do. It's in their
MANNER that they have the advantage of us."
"And where would _I_ be gettin' the manner of a Lord, when me father
died the poorest peasant in the village, an' me brought up from hand to
mouth since I was a child?"
"I'm sorry I said anythin', father. I wasn't reproachin' ye."
"I know that, Peg."
"I'm so proud of ye that yer manner manes more to me than any man o'
title in England."
He drew her gently to him.
"There's the one great danger of two people who have grown near to each
other separatin'. When they, meet again, they each think the other has
changed. They look at each other with different eyes, Peg. An' that's
what yer doin' with me. So long as I was near ye, ye didn't notice the
roughness o' me speech an' the lack o' breedin' an' the want o'
knowledge. Ye've seen and listened to others since who have all I never
had the chance to get. God knows I want YOU to have all the advantages
that the wurrld can give ye, since you an' me counthry--an' the memory
of yer mother--are all I have had in me life these twenty years past.
An' that was why I urged ye to go to England on the bounty of yer
uncle. I wanted ye to know there was another kind of a life, where the
days flowed along without a care or a sorrow. Where poverty was but a
word, an' misery had no place. An' ye've seen it, Peg. An' the whole
wurrld has changed for ye, Peg. An' from now you'll sit in judgment on
the dead and gone days of yer youth--an' in judgment on me--"
She interrupted him violently:
"What are ye sayin' to me at all! _I_ sit in judgment on YOU! What do
ye think I've become? Let me tell ye I've come back to ye a thousand
times more yer child than I was when I left ye. What I've gone through
has only strengthened me love for ye and me reverence for yer life's
work. _I_ MAY have changed. But don't we all change day by day, even as
we pass them close to each other. An' if the change is for the betther,
where's the harm? I HAVE changed, father. There's somethin' wakened in
me I never knew before. It's a WOMAN I've brought ye back instead o'
the GIRL I left. An' it's the WOMAN'LL stand by ye, father, even as the
child did when I depended on ye for every little thing. There's no
power in the wurrld'll ever separate us!"
She clung to him hysterically.
Even while she protested the most, he felt the strange new note in her
life. He held her firmly and looked into her eyes.
"There's one thing, Peg, that must part us, some day, when it comes to
you."
"What's that, father?"
"LOVE, Peg."
She lowered her eyes and said nothing.
"Has it come? Has it, Peg?"
She buried her face on his breast, and though no sound came, he knew by
the trembling of her little body that she was crying.
So it HAD come into her life.
The child he had sent away a month ago had come back to him transformed
in that little time--into a woman.
The Cry of Youth and the Call of Life had reached her heart.
CHAPTER II
LOOKING BACKWARD
That night Peg and her father faced the future. They argued out all it
might mean. They would fight it together. It was a pathetic, wistful
little Peg that came back to him, and O'Connell set himself the task of
lifting something of the load that lay on his child's heart.
After all, he reasoned with her, with all his gentility and his
advantages to have allowed Peg to like him and then to deliberately
hurt her at the end, just as she was leaving, for a fancied insult, did
not augur well for the character of Jerry.
He tried to laugh her out of her mood.
He chided her for joking with an Englishman at a critical moment such
as their leave-taking.
"And it WAS a joke, Peg, wasn't it?"
"Sure, it was, father."
"You ought to have known betther than that. During all that long month
ye were there did ye meet one Englishman that ever saw a joke?"
"Not many, father. Cousin Alaric couldn't."
"Did ye meet ONE?"
"I did, father."
"Ye did?"
"I did."
"THERE was a man whose friendship ye might treasure."
"I do treasure it, father."
"Ye do?"
"Yes, father."
"Who was it?"
"Jerry, father."
O'Connell took a long breath and sighed.
Jerry! Always Jerry!
"I thried several jokes on him, an' he saw most of 'em."
"I'd like to see this paragon, faith."
"I wish ye could, father. Indade I do. Ye'd be such good friends."
"WE'D be friends? Didn't ye say he was a GINTLEMAN?"
"He sez a GENTLEMAN is a man who wouldn't willingly hurt anybody else.
And he sez, as well, that it doesn't matther what anybody was born, if
they have that quality in them they're just as much gintleman as the
people with ancestors an' breedin'. An' he said that the finest
gintleman he ever met was a CABMAN."
"A cabman, Peg?"
"Yes, faith--that's what he said. The cabman couldn't hurt anybody, and
so he was a gintlemaa."
"Did he mane it?"
"He meant everything he said--to ME."
"There isn't much the matther with him, I'm thinkin'."
"There's nothin' the matther with him, father."
"Mebbe he is Irish way back. It's just what an Irishman would say--a
RALE Irishman."
"There's no nationality in character or art, or sport or letthers or
music. They're all of one great commonwealth. They're all one
brotherhood, whether they're white or yellow or red or black. There's
no nationality about them. The wurrld wants the best, an' they don't
care what colour the best man is, so long as he's GREAT."
O'Connell listened amazed.
"An' where might ye have heard that?"
"Jerry towld me. An' it's thrue. I believe it."
They talked far into the night.
He unfolded his plans.
If his book was a success and he made some little money out of it, they
would go back to Ireland and live out their lives there. And it was
going to be a wonderful Ireland, too, with the best of the old and
ceaseless energy of the new.
An Ireland worth living in.
They would make their home there again, and this time they would not
leave it.
"But some day we might go to England, father, eh?"
"What for?"
"Just to see it, father."
"I was only there once. It was there yer mother an' me were married. It
was there she gave her life into me care."
He became suddenly silent, and the light of memory shone in his eyes,
and the sigh of heart-ache broke through his lips.
And his thoughts stretched back through the years, and once again
Angela was beside him.
Peg saw the look and knew it. She kept quite still. Then, as of old,
when her father was in trouble, she did as she was wont in those
old-young days--she slipped her little hand into his and waited for him
to break the silence.
After a while he stood up.
"Ye'd betther be goin' to bed, Peg."
"All right, father."
She went to the door. Then she stopped.
"Ye're glad I'm home, father?"
He pressed her closely to him for answer.
"I'll never lave ye again," she whispered.
All through the night Peg lay awake, searching through the past and
trying to pierce through the future.
Toward morning she slept and, in a whirling dream she saw a body
floating down a stream. She stretched out her hand to grasp it when the
eyes met hers, and the eyes were those of a dead man--and the man was
Jerry.
She woke trembling with fear and she turned on the light and huddled
into a chair and sat chattering with terror until she heard her father
moving in his room. She went to the door and asked him to let her go in
to him. He opened the door and saw his little Peg wild eyed, pale and
terror-stricken, standing on the threshold. The look in her eyes
terrified him.
"What is it, Peg, me darlin'? What is it?"
She crept in, and looked up into his face with her startling gaze, and
she grasped him with both of her small hands, and in a voice dull and
hopeless, cried despairingly:
"I dreamt he was dead! Dead! and I couldn't rache him. An' he went on
past me--down the stream--with his face up-turned--" The grasp
loosened, and just as she slipped from him, O'Connell caught her in his
strong arms and placed her gently on the sofa and tended her until her
eyes opened again and looked up at him.
It was the first time his Peg had fainted.
She had indeed come back to him changed.
He reproached himself bitterly.
Why had he insisted on her going?
She had a sorrow at her heart, now, that no hand could heal--not even
his.
Time only could soften her grief--time--and--
CHAPTER III
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
Those first days following Peg's return found father and child nearer
each other than they had been since that famous trip through Ireland,
when he lectured from the back of his historical cart.
She became O'Connell's amanuensis. During the day she would go from
library to library in New York, verifying data for her father's
monumental work. At night he would dictate and she would write.
O'Connell took a newer and more vital interest in the book, and it
advanced rapidly toward completion.
It was a significant moment to introduce it, since the eyes of the
world were turned on the outcome of the new measure for Home Rule for
Ireland, that Mr. Asquith's government were introducing, and that
appeared to have every chance of becoming law.
The dream of so many Irishmen seemed to be within the bounds of
possibility of becoming a forceful reality.
Accordingly O'Connell strained every nerve to complete it. He reviewed
the past; he dwelt on the present: he attempted to forecast the future.
And with every new page that he completed he felt it was one more step
nearer home--the home he was hoping for and building on for Peg--in
Ireland.
There the colour would come back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes
and the flash of merriment to her tongue. She rarely smiled now, and
the pallor was always in her cheeks, and wan circles pencilled around
her eyes spoke of hard working days and restless nights.
She no longer spoke of England.
He, wise in his generation, never referred to it. All her interest
seemed to be centred in his book.
It was a strange metamorphosis for Peg--this writing at dictation:
correcting her orthography; becoming familiar with historical facts and
hunting through bookshelves for the actual occurrences during a certain
period.
And she found a certain happiness in doing it.
Was it not for her father?
And was she not improving herself?
Already she would not be at such a disadvantage, as a month ago, with
people.
The thought gratified her.
She had two letters from Ethel: the first a simple, direct one of
gratitude and of regret; gratitude for Peg's kindness and loyalty to
her, and regret that Peg had left them. The second told of a trip she
was about to make to Norway with some friends.
They were going to close the house in Scarboro and return to London
early in September.
Alaric had decided to follow his father's vocation and go to the bar.
The following Autumn they would settle permanently in London while
Alaric ate his qualifying dinners and addressed himself to making his
career!
Of Brent she wrote nothing. That incident was apparently closed. She
ended her letter with the warmest expressions of regard and affection
for Peg, and the hope that some day they would meet again and renew
their too-brief intimacy. The arrival of these letters and her daily
'deviling' for her father were the only incidents in her even life.
One evening some few weeks after her return, she was in her room
preparing to begin her night's work with her father when she heard the
bell ring. That was unusual. Their callers were few. She heard the
outer door open--then the sound of a distant voice mingling with her
father's.
Then came a knock at her door.
"There's somebody outside here to see ye, Peg," said her father.
"Who is it, father?"
"A perfect sthranger--to me. Be quick now."
She heard her father's footsteps go into the little sitting-room and
then the hum of voices.
Without any apparent reason she suddenly felt a tenseness and
nervousness. She walked out of her room and paused a moment outside the
closed door of the sitting-room and listened.
Her father was talking. She opened the door and walked in. A tall,
bronzed man came forward to greet her. Her heart almost stopped. She
trembled violently. The next moment Jerry had clasped her hand in both
of his.
"How are you, Peg?"
He smiled down at her as he used to in Regal Villa: and behind the
smile there was a grave look in his dark eyes, and the old tone of
tenderness in his voice.
"How are you, Peg?" he repeated.
"I'm fine, Mr. Jerry," she replied in a daze. Then she looked at
O'Connell and she hurried on to say:
"This is my father--Sir Gerald Adair."
"We'd inthroduced ourselves already," said O'Connell, good-naturedly,
eyeing the unexpected visitor all the while. "And what might ye be
doin' in New York?" he asked.
"I have never seen America. I take an Englishman's interest in what we
once owned--"
"--And lost thro' misgovernment--"
"--Well, we'll say MISUNDERSTANDING--"
"--As they'll one day lose Ireland--"
"--I hope not. The two countries understand each other better every
day."
"It's taken centuries to do it."
"The more lasting will be the union."
As Peg watched Jerry she was wondering all the time why he was there.
This quiet, undemonstrative, unemotional man. Why?
The bell rang again. Peg started to go, but O'Connell stopped her.
"It's McGinnis. This is his night to call and tell me the politics of
the town. I'll take him into the next room, Peg, until yer visitor is
gone."
"Oh, please--" said Jerry hurriedly and taking a step toward the door.
"Allow me to call some other time."
"Stay where ye are!" cried O'Connell, hurrying out as the bell rang
again.
Peg and Jerry looked at each other a moment, then she lowered her eyes.
"I want to ask ye something, Sir Gerald," she began.
"Jerry!" he corrected.
"Please forgive me for what I said to ye that day. It was wrong of me
to say it. Yet it was just what ye might have expected from me. But
ye'd been so fine to me--a little nobody--all that wonderful month that
it's hurt me ever since. And I didn't dare write to ye--it would have
looked like presumption from me. But now that ye've come here--ye've
found me out and I want to ask yer pardon--an' I want to ask ye not to
be angry with me."
"I couldn't be angry with you, Peg."
He paused, and, as he looked at her, the reserve of the held-in,
self-contained man was broken. He bent over her and said softly:
"Peg, I love you!"
A cry welled up from Peg's heart to her lips, and was stifled. The room
swam around her.
Was all her misery to end?
Did this man come back from the mists of memory BECAUSE he loved her?
She tried to speak but nothing came from her parched lips and tightened
throat.
Then she became conscious that he was speaking again, and she listened
to him with all her senses, with all her heart, and from her soul.
"I knew you would never write to me, and somehow I wondered just how
much you cared for me--if at all. So I came here. I love you, Peg. I
want you to be my wife. I want to care for you, and tend you, and make
you happy. I love you!"
Her heart leaped and strained. The blood surged to her temples.
"Do you love me?" she whispered, and her voice trembled and broke.
"I do. Indeed I do. Be my wife."
"But you have a title," she pleaded
"Share it with me!" he replied.
"Ye'd be so ashamed o' me, ye would!"
"No, Peg, I'd be proud of you. I love you!"
Peg, unable to argue or plead, or strive against what her heart yearned
for the most, broke down and sobbed as she murmured:
"I love you, too, Mister Jerry."
In a moment she was in his arms.
It was the first time anyone had touched her tenderly besides her
father. All her sturdy, boyish ruggedness shrank from any display of
affection. Just for a moment it did now. Then she slowly yielded
herself.
But Jerry stroked her hair, and looked into her eyes and smiled down at
her lovingly, as he asked:
"What will your father say?"
She looked happily up at him and answered:
"Do you know one of the first things me father taught me when I was
just a little child?"
"Tell me!"
"It was from Tom Moore: 'Oh, there's nothin' half so sweet in life As
Love's young dream.'"
When O'Connell came into the room later he realised that the great
summons had come to his little girl.
He felt a dull pain at his heart.
But only for a moment.
The thought came to him that he was about to give to England his
daughter in marriage! Well, had he not taken from the English one of
her fairest daughters as his wife?
And a silent prayer went up from his heart that happiness would abide
with his Peg and her 'Jerry' and that their romance would last longer
than had Angela's and his.
AFTERWORD
And now the moment has come to take leave of the people I have lived
with for so long. Yet, though I say "Adieu!" I feel it is only a
temporary leave-taking. Their lives are so linked with mine that some
day in the future I may be tempted to draw back the curtain and show
the passage of years in their various lives.
Simultaneously with the Second-Reading of the Home Rule Bill passing
through the English House of Commons, O'Connell published his book.
Setting down clearly, without passion or prejudice, the actual facts of
the ancient and modern struggle for Ireland's freedom, and
foreshadowing the coming of the New Era of prosperity and enlightenment
and education and business integrity--O'Connell found himself hailed,
as a modern prophet.
He appealed to them to BEG no longer but to cooperate, to
organize--above all to WORK and to work consistently and intelligently.
He appealed to the Irish working in factories and work-shops and in
civil appointments in the great cities of the world, to come back to
Ireland, and, once again to worship at the shrine of the beauty of
God's Country! To open their eyes and their hearts to all the light and
glory and wonder which God gives to the marvellous world He has made
for humanity. To see the Dawn o'er mountain and lake; scent the grass
and the incense of the flowers, and the sweet breath of the land. To
grasp the real and tumultuous magnificence of their native country.
He appealed to all true Irishmen to take up their lives again in the
land from which, they were driven, and to be themselves the progenitors
of Ireland's New Nation.
It will not be long before his appeal will be answered and his prophecy
fulfilled.
The Dawn of the New Ireland has begun to shed its light over the
country, and the call of Patriotism will bring Irishmen from the
farthest limits of the world, as it drove them away in the bitter time
of blood and strife and ignorance and despotism.
Those days have passed. O'Connell was in the thick o the battle in his
youth; in his manhood he now sees the fruit of the conflict.
Some day, with him, we will visit Peg in her English home, and see the
marvels time and love have wrought upon her. But to those who knew her
in the old days she is still the same Peg O' my Heart--resolute, loyal,
unflinching, mingling the laugh with the tear--truth and honesty her
bed-rock.
And whilst we are in London we will drop into the Law-Courts and hear
Alaric Chichester, now Barrister-at-Law, argue his first case and show
the possibility of following in his famous father's footsteps.
We will also visit Mrs. Chichester and hear of her little grand-child,
born in Berlin, where her daughter, Ethel, met and married an attache
at the Embassy, and has formed a salon in which the illustrious in the
Diplomatic world foregather.
It will be a grateful task to revive old memories of those who formed
the foreground of the life-story of one whose radiant presence shall
always live in my memory: whose steadfastness and courage endeared her
to all; whose influence on those who met her and watched her and
listened to her was far-reaching, since she epitomized in her small
body all that makes woman loveable and man supreme: honour, faith and
Love!
Adieu! Peg O' my Heart!