PEGGY’S ESCAPADE.
Peggy was certainly very troublesome, there was no doubt whatever on
that point. Even Molly had to agree to this most patent fact. She did
not want even kind Molly’s attentions; and as to the rest of the family,
she openly said that she couldn’t “abide the sight o’ them.” These words
were not pleasant to hear, and Mrs. Wyndham was not the sort of person
to take them quietly. When the child refused to eat her meals properly,
and sat sulky and speechless in one of the beautiful drawing-rooms,
having first of all spilt a cup of tea all over one of the pretty frocks
which had just been bought for her, Mrs. Wyndham determined to defy her
husband and take the bit between her teeth. Accordingly, she marched up
to Peggy, took her hand, and led her up to her bedroom. There she pushed
her in with some violence, and said, “You’re a very naughty, ungrateful
little girl; but here you shall stay until you express sorrow for your
misdemeanours.”
“Whativer’s thim?” inquired Peggy.
“I’ll leave you to find out, you naughty, bad child!”
Mrs. Wyndham left the room, locking the door behind her and putting the
key into her pocket. She told her daughters that they were neither of
them to go near Peggy, and expressed anger and annoyance when Molly
began to cry.
“You make me sick, Molly,” she said. “Now do control yourself; take a
lesson from your sister. That girl’s spirit must be broken in, or I
won’t live in the house with her. Thank goodness, she’s safe for the
present. I declare, she has quite tired me out. Girls, you had better
take the pony trap and drive over to see the Wrenns and invite them to
tea to-morrow. I shall go and lie down in my bedroom.”
Mrs. Wyndham lay on her sofa close to the open window, and, the day
being warm and she really tired, dropped asleep. “For once I’ve got the
better of that Irish imp,” she murmured to herself as she dropped into
placid slumber.
But Mrs. Wyndham had reckoned without her host. When Peggy found herself
locked up in her spacious bedroom she first gave vent to some angry
words, and burying her little face in the bedclothes, “drownded”
herself, as she expressed it, in her tears. But tears with the Irish
girl were something like the showers of an April day. Soon she was
looking around her and smiling to herself. The window of her bedroom was
wide open, and had she not escaped by that same window before on that
very day?
“Faix thin,” she muttered, “it’s herself don’t know much. I’m not in
dread of her, not at all, nor any of the grand folk I’m likely to meet
here. Is it me that’s scared? Not me. Why, even the servants, they don’t
paralyse me; us in Ireland”—here she threw her head back—“ah! it takes a
dale o’ trouble to import us to a place like this. I declare, for the
love o’ goodness! I think I’ll run away again.”
No sooner had the thought occurred to her than Peggy resolved to act
upon it. She was out of the window and sitting on the roof, then she
managed to scramble until she got to a great stack of chimneys. These
she inspected with keen interest, not in the least regarding the fact
that her white frock was turning black. She had now mounted up to a good
height, and from where she stood she could get a glimpse of the yard.
Some fowls of different sizes and sorts were strutting about there in a
most important manner; a flock of geese came into view, led by a great
white gander; and, finally, the king of the farmyard appeared, in the
shape of a huge turkey-cock, who said, “Gobble, gobble, gobble,” as he
was followed hither and thither by his troop of wives.
“The Lord be praised!” cried Peggy, “glory be to heaven, but it’s
consoled I be.”
By turning and twisting and clinging, occasionally climbing up a little
way and occasionally going down a little way, Peggy found herself right
round at the back of the house and hanging over the farmyard. There was
a good drop, however—at least thirty feet—between her and the ground,
and this drop, try as she would, she did not dare to manage unaided.
Several men, belonging to the farm, were moving about, employed over
their several duties; not one, however, looked up to where the child
with the bright eyes and face much blackened with chimney smuts, was
regarding them wistfully. Presently, however, a burly-looking man came
and stood exactly under the portion of the roof to which poor Peggy was
clinging. He was a big man, at least six feet in stature. Here was her
opportunity.
“Yerra, Pat!” she screamed, “hould aisy, for the love o’ God; don’t
stir, man, as you value your immortal! I’m comin’.”
The next instant the man, who was christened Pat by the girl on the
roof, felt a sharp bump on his shoulders, and Peggy, clinging with her
dirty little arms to his neck, burst into a fit of laughter and tumbled
to the ground.
“Holy Moses!” she cried, “if I didn’t have a stitch in me side intirely
at the face of ye, Pat, when I let out that screech! But there, I’m all
right, and I have me liberty, praise the Lord! To be sure now, I was
dumfoundered how to get off that roof until ye placed yerself so handy.”
Several men and women now came flocking round the girl, and it must be
owned that they all burst into laughter, and one or two of them said,
“Well done, missy! it’s you that have the spirit.”
“You’d better let me wash you, my dear,” said a big, red-faced woman,
who had charge of the fowls. “You’re a sight to behold if you were to
meet any of the family.”
“But I don’t want to meet the family,” said Peggy; “I want to stay here
along wid ye an’ the dear little hins an’ the turkeys an’ the geese. Why
then, me fine master, an’ do ye think I’m afraid o’ ye?” Here she went
up to the great turkey-cock and pulled him by the tail. The fierce bird
tried furiously to peck at her, but she kept her ground, rushing round
and round in a circle, clinging on to the bird, while the servants and
farm-labourers held their sides with laughter. At last, however, Mrs.
Johns, as the red-faced woman was called, induced Peggy to come and be
washed; but, although the young lady’s face and hands could be restored
to a state of moderate cleanliness, the frock was past all hope.
“Whatever is to be done?” said Mrs. Johns. “The frock will tell on you,
missy dear.”
“I don’t care if it does,” answered the child; “now that I am here I
want to have a bit o’ fun. Can none o’ ye consale me for a bit if the
quality go by? I’m ragin’ with a hunger, too, bedad, for I couldn’t
swallow a bit at tea-time, wid herself scowlin’ at me. Oh now thin, Mary
asthore, it’s you that will be kind to me, won’t ye? Ye’ll wet a drop o’
tay an’ bring it out here to the farmyard, an’ I’ll dhrink it, for I’m
as dhry as a cinder; an’ I could do with a lump o’ cake, too. You run
an’ fetch thim for me, Mary asthore.”
“My name is Ann,” replied the woman, “but I’ll do what you want, you
poor little thing.”
Accordingly, Peggy, seated on a three-legged stool in the yard, enjoyed
herself vastly. She was surrounded by her satellites, the sort of people
she could appreciate and understand. She drank cup after cup of “tay”
and devoured many hunches of rich cake, chattering as she ate, and
throwing crumbs to the different birds that flocked round her. When she
was quite satisfied she rose and shook the crumbs from her dirty frock.
“I’ll come again to-morrow, God bless ye all, me darlin’s,” she said.
“An’ now, fetch a ladder, for I must be goin’ back by the road I come.
Pat, man, run. Why, man, have ye got joints in yer bones? Ye’ll have me
cotched if ye don’t stir yer stumps.”
Pat, whose real name was William, secured a ladder, and held it while
Peggy climbed. Soon she was lost to view in the intricacies of the roof.
The servants looked at each other after she had gone, and vowed an
unspoken vow that they would rather have their tongues cut out than tell
on the poor Irish missy.
“Please God, she doesn’t catch it from Mrs. Wyndham,” exclaimed Mrs.
Johns. “She’d have a hard and bitter tongue for an innocent child like
that.”
“She took me all of a heap,” exclaimed William, “when she jumped on my
back. But I do declare, she’s as pretty a little thing as I ever set
eyes on.”
Meanwhile the “pretty little thing” in question re-entered by the open
window, changed her dirty frock, put on a clean one, and sat demurely in
a chair, looking as though she had not stirred an inch since Mrs.
Wyndham had left her, when that lady appeared again on the scene. It is
true there was a wonderful brightness in the eyes of the culprit, and
not a vestige of sorrow on the small, defiant face; but Mrs. Wyndham
considered that she had gained a victory.
“Come, Peggy,” she said, “Mr. Wyndham is waiting to speak to you in the
study. I will take you to him. Come at once. I hope, Peggy, you are
sorry for your naughtiness.”
“Arrah thin, niver a bit,” replied Peggy, looking full up into the good
lady’s face.
Mr. Wyndham, poor man, had been given a most vivacious account of
Peggy’s iniquities, her conduct at the Andersons’ farm, her dreadful
exploit with the bull, the scene which the two girls had come across of
Peggy as maid-of-all-work to Mrs. Anderson; and finally, her behaviour
at tea, when she had spilt a whole cup down her pretty new frock, and
had not expressed a word of contrition.
“To tell the truth,” Mrs. Wyndham finally added, “unless you can manage
to make that child conform to our rules, Paul, I really shall be obliged
to say that I must go from home for the present, and take my girls with
me.”
“Oh it won’t come to that, dear,” replied Wyndham; but he felt a good
deal of distress, of pity for the child, and of pity also for his wife
and daughters.
“Send her to me. I’ll have a talk with her, and afterwards I will tell
you what I think is best to be done,” was his remark.
Accordingly, Peggy was fetched, and undoubtedly there was no sorrow on
the face of Peggy, and no sorrow in her defiant words when she was
ushered into Wyndham’s study.
“Here she is, Paul, and I greatly fear from her manner that she isn’t in
the least repentant,” said Mrs. Wyndham.
“Ah, thin, an’ that I’m not,” was Peggy’s response. Then the door was
shut.
Wyndham glanced up from his desk; he was busy writing a letter, and he
did not say a word to Peggy at first, but calmly went on writing. There
was something rather fascinating to the child in his manner. He was a
very handsome, distinguished-looking man. He wrote very fast. She had
never seen any one write properly before, and she had been taught
writing, after a fashion, herself, but never writing of this sort. The
words seemed to fly over the paper, and then what a funny sort of
machine he had close by, with queer little letters sticking up all over
it! Suddenly, having finished writing his letter, Wyndham put a sheet of
paper into the machine, turned on, as Peggy expressed it, “a kind of
tap,” and began making a loud noise and printing as hard as he could.
“Arrah thin! don’t go so fast!” said the child.
Wyndham did not take any notice of her, but went on typing his letter
until he had come to the end. Then he folded it up, put it into an
envelope, which he addressed, stamped, and laid to one side. Then, for
the first time, he looked up at Peggy. She was immensely interested.
“I wish you’d do that again,” she said.
“What am I to do again?” he asked.
“That tip-tapping-tap.”
“Oh, this is what they call a typewriter.”
Peggy shook her head. “Don’t know anything about it,” she remarked.
“Peggy, will you sit down for a little? I have”—he took out his
watch—“exactly a quarter of an hour in which to speak to you.”
“Bedad, thin, that’ll be long enough,” was her response.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because, if ye’re goin’ to be scoldin’ me all the time, I think a
quarter of an hour will be as long as will be good for yer breath. It’s
bad when ye riz the voice in passion, an’ a quarter of an hour’ll do the
business fine.”
“Peggy dear!” There was something gentle in the voice, something
reserved, and at the same time something pained.
It was that pained note that arrested the child’s indifference. From the
moment Wyndham had come to the Irish cabin, Peggy had been feeling that
little heart in her breast getting colder and colder and harder and
harder; but now, all of a sudden, it began to throb with new life.
“Peggy, instead of a quarter of an hour being too long for what I have
to say to you, it will be a great deal too short; I don’t want to waste
a moment. To begin, I have something here I should like you to look at.”
Now, if Peggy had one fault greater than another, it was the bump of
curiosity. Wyndham went to a drawer, took a key from his pocket, opened
the drawer, and took out a little brown morocco case. He opened the
case.
“Come here, Peggy,” he said. The girl advanced, he slipped his arm round
her waist. “I want you to look at this,” he said.
She looked down at the picture of a man, a man with a kind, brave, noble
face, the eyes were shining with a strange sort of wistfulness. The lips
were firm and beautifully curved, the brow was broad, but it was the
expression which made the face altogether charming.
[Illustration: “THAT MAN, PEGGY, IS YOUR FATHER.”—_Page 63._]
“That man, Peggy, is your father.”
“Glory”——began Peggy.
“Peggy, he was a gentleman.” The child was silent. “Your mother was a
very beautiful peasant woman; your father loved her and married her, and
afterwards, when you were born, she died, poor thing! Your father was
very poor then, very poor; he was in India with his regiment, and could
not come home to take care of his little baby, but he loved her very
much. He often wrote to me, and told me about her. He sent all the money
he could spare to the people who looked after you, Peggy, and when at
last he came to die he wrote me a long letter, a very long letter; it
was all about you and his love for you. He said in that letter, ‘I want
you to bring Peggy up as your own child, and, above all things, I want
her to be a lady. I want her to be good and never to tell lies, and to
put honour first, and I want her to learn all those things that ladies
ought to know. I want her to be a comfort to you and to your wife and to
your girls. I think she will be, if she is her mother’s child and mine.
Tell her when you see her, all that I want her to be, and give her, when
you think she is fit to receive it, the letter which I enclose for her.
It is a letter partly from me and partly from that poor, sweet young
mother whom she never saw. But don’t give Peggy either of these letters
until she is fit to receive them.’ In the letter which your father wrote
to me, Peggy, he said that I was to bring you up as I thought right; and
he further said that he felt that he, perhaps, would be not far away,
and would be listening to you, and watching you when you were striving
to overcome the many faults which you learnt when you were a little girl
in a cabin in Ireland.”
“And how am I to forget, bedad?” said Peggy. Her voice had altered in
tone, and there were tears in her eyes. “Give me that letter o’ me
father’s,” she said, “and I’ll run away an’ not bother ye any more.”
“I couldn’t do that, Peggy. Your father when he wrote said that you were
not to receive his letter until you were fit to read it, until you were
sufficiently trained to appreciate what he has written for your
guidance, until you love me enough to love his message to you. Peggy,
look at me.”
The child turned and stared.
“At the present moment I am afraid, my poor little girl, that you are
hating me.”
“Arrah no, not quite,” said Peggy, “but I hate _herself_ and Jessie. I
don’t mind Molly one way or t’other.”
“The person you speak of as ‘herself’ happens to be my wife. Jessie is
my daughter. Do you think that it is pleasant to me to hear that you, a
little ignorant girl, hate them when they wish to be so kind to you?”
“Bedad, it mayn’t be pleasant, but it’s thrue.”
“Now, Peggy, I have told you about your father. I have one or two other
things to say. Your father was my greatest friend; once he saved my
life. It was a long time ago. I’ll tell you that story some day. There
is nothing under the sun I would not do for your father; his death was a
very bitter grief to me, and the one consolation I had when he passed
away, was the thought of looking after his child; the only thing I am
sorry for is this—that he didn’t put you into my care a long time ago.
Peggy, my dear, I have no intention of letting you go; you must submit
to the new life. It is the life you were born to, remember.”
Peggy fidgeted restlessly. “I don’t like it a bit, yer mightiness,” she
said.
“Peggy dear, you must not call me ‘your mightiness.’ There are a great
many words you must forget.”
“An’ however am I to do that, yer—yer honour?”
“That is not a right way to speak to me either. You and I are, I hope, a
gentleman and a lady.”
“Bedad, thin, I’m no lady.”
“Then, Peggy, you honestly say to my face that you deny your own father,
for there never was, in the course of the world’s history, a better
gentleman than Peter Desmond.”
“I’m not goin’ for to deny it to him, but me mother.”
“Your pretty young mother was, it is true, a peasant by birth, but she
was well educated in a convent school, and, compared to you, was a lady.
She did everything that her husband told her. I saw her once, Peggy; it
was shortly before you were born, and I was touched with her sweetness
and gentleness. She would not have dreamed of saying ‘your mightiness,’
or ‘your honour,’ or ‘bedad,’ or ‘wurra,’ or ‘begorra,’ or any of those
words. Now, Peggy, I want to ask you if you will help me?”
“To be sure I will, Uncle Paul, if I may call ye that.”
“Yes, that will do splendidly. I should like you to call me Uncle Paul.”
“I’ll manage yer hins an’ milk yer cows. How will that do?” said Peggy.
“My dear little girl, that won’t do at all. I don’t want you to manage
hens or to milk cows. It was quite right for you to do those things when
you were living in the cabin with the O’Flynns; but now that you are
here you must act differently; you must allow yourself to be trained,
you must dress nicely and speak nicely, and obey those who know better
than yourself. At present you are so shockingly ignorant that I am
positively ashamed of you. Do you know that you might have been killed
to-day when you got on that bull’s back?”
“Oh, wurra wisha, not at all, your mightiness, there wasn’t a sthroke o’
malice in the poor crayture.”
“Now, Peggy, there you are again! Your language is to be completely
altered. How could I introduce a little girl like you to my friends? If
you love your father I will give you his letter as a reward; but I will
not give it to you until you have proved your love by learning how to
speak nicely, how to eat properly—in short, how to be a worthy daughter
of Peter Desmond. I don’t mean to punish you, I don’t wish to be unkind
to you; and in order to help you I have asked a great friend of mine,
Mary Welsh, to come here for the next fortnight.”
“I niver heard her name before. I’m moithered intirely wid the lot o’
fresh people ye’re bringin’ round me, Uncle Paul.”
“I think you will like Mary Welsh, and I will tell you why. She’s an
Irishwoman.”
“Oh thin, bedad, is she? An’ does she know about hins an’ turkey-cocks
an’ geese an’ little pigeens?”
“I dare say she will talk to you about those things; but there’s a wide
difference between her and you, for she speaks like a cultivated lady,
whereas you talk like a little girl of the people.”
“Sure thin, yer mightiness, if you’d only lave me wid thim I’d be as
happy as the day is long.”
“Now, my dear little Peggy, how can I do that when your father has
implored of me to bring you up as one of my own children? Now, Peggy,
set your wits to work—you’re quite clever enough—do you think that would
be carrying out your father’s wishes if I did as you wished now? But you
don’t know any better, you are just a silly, silly little girl.”
“Maybe you’re right, sor.”
“Uncle Paul.”
“Uncle Paul.”
“When Mary Welsh comes you can talk with her just as much as ever you
like about Old Ireland; she will stay here for one fortnight, and at the
end of that time she will tell me what she thinks had best be done
towards your education.”
“How many things must I larn, Uncle Paul? I was sent out from school
finished, so to spake.”
“Yes, but there are other schools where you would not be considered
finished.”
“Oh glory! All right, Uncle Paul, I’ll do me level best.”
“I think you will, my poor child. Now run upstairs, wash your face and
hands, then go to the schoolroom and try to copy the way Molly speaks
and the way Jessie speaks. They will be having supper together in the
schoolroom, and I want you to have it with them,”
“I’d like to confess a bit before I go, your mightiness.”
“To confess?”
“Why, this. It’s only right I should tell ye. Herself locked me up
because I spilt me tay down in the drawin’-room. She locked me up in me
room for many a long hour.”
“If I had been at home I wouldn’t have left you so long by yourself.”
“Oh blessings on ye, I didn’t miss ye. I wasn’t a bit unhappy when I was
on the roof, an’ jumped on the back o’ Pat, an’ had tay wetted fresh for
me by Mary, an’ lumps o’ cake to swallow, an’ the turkey-cock to pull by
the tail and run round and round wid it. It wasn’t lonely I was, yer
mightiness.”
“Little Peggy, you are absolutely the most distracting child I ever came
across. I don’t know who Pat is or who Mary is.”
“They’re the people in your own farmyard, yer honour. I jumped on Pat’s
back, an’ didn’t he let out a screech too, be the same token!”
“Well, all these things, my dear, you must not do again, that’s all. I
will not speak of this adventure, and don’t you, dear. Now go and get
ready for supper, and meet your cousins in the schoolroom. When Mary
comes I’m sure you will begin to say it is very nice to be a little
lady—to be an Irish lady, remember. If you don’t fall in love with Mary
Welsh you will be the first young person who ever did not.”
“Ah thin, there’s never no sayin’,” replied Peggy, and with these
ambiguous words she walked as far as the door. There she stood and
pondered for a minute, presently she came back. “Uncle Paul.”
“Yes, little child.”
“How long do ye think I’ll be gettin’ ready to read the letter of me own
father, what’s lyin’ in his cold grave?”
“That depends on yourself. When you are, in my opinion, fit to read the
letter, it will be given to you.”
“I’ll have a good thry,” said Peggy. “Kiss me, Uncle Paul.”
He did kiss her very tenderly. He looked into her wonderful, luminous
eyes, and there came back to him a memory of his boyhood, and Peter
Desmond, the merriest, cheeriest, jolliest boy in the public school
where they had both been educated.
“There’s nothing I would not do for that poor little thing,” he said to
himself; “and if there is any one in the world who can help me it is
Mary Welsh.”