Peg O' My Heart Part 89

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 grat.i.tude and of regret; grat.i.tude 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 n.o.body--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!"