Chapter Iii

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.

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!