Peg O' My Heart Part 46

"I must," said Peg from the top of the stairs. "What will I get here but to be laughed at and jeered at by a lot of people that are not fit to even look at me father. Who are they I'd like to know that I mustn't speak his name in their presence? I love me father and sure it's easier to suffer for the want of food than the want of love!"

Suddenly she raised one hand above her head and in the manner and tone of a public-speaker she astounded Jerry with the following outburst:

"An' that's what the Irish are doin' all over the wurrld. They're driven out of their own country by the English and become wandherers on the face of the earth and nothin' they ever EARN'LL make up to them for the separation from their homes and their loved ones!" She finished the peroration on a high note and with a forced manner such as she had frequently heard on the platform.

She smiled at the astonished Jerry and asked him:

"Do ye know what that is?"

"I haven't the least idea," he answered truthfully.

"That's out of one of me father's speeches. Me father makes grand speeches. He makes them in the Cause of Ireland."

"Oh, really! In the Cause of Ireland, eh?" said Jerry.

"Yes. He's been strugglin' all his life to make Ireland free--to get her Home Rule, ye know. But the English are so ignorant. They think they know more than me father. If they'd do what me father tells them sure there'd be no more throuble in Ireland at all."

"Really?" said Jerry, quite interestedly.

"Not a bit of throuble. I wish me father was here to explain it to ye.

He could tell ye the whole thing in a couple of hours. I wish he were here now just to give you an example of what fine speakin' really is.

Do you like speeches?"

"Very much--sometimes," replied Jerry, guardedly.

"Me father is wondherful on a platform with a lot o' people in front of him. He's wondherful. I've seen him take two or three hundred people who didn't know they had a grievance in the wurrld--the poor cratures--they were just contented to go on bein' ground down and trampled on and they not knowing a thing about it--I've seen me father take that crowd and in five minutes, afther he had started spakin' to them ye wouldn't know they were the same people. They were all shoutin'

at once, and they had murther in their eye and it was blood they were afther. They wanted to reform somethin'--they weren't sure what--but they wanted to do it--an' at the cost of life. Me father could have led them anywhere. It's a wondherful POWER he was. And magnetism. He just looks at the wake wuns an' they wilt. He turns to the brave wuns and they're ready to face cannon-b.a.l.l.s for him. He's a born leader--that's what he is, a born leader!" She warmed to her subject: she was on her hobby-horse and she would ride it as far as this quiet stranger would let her. She went on again:

"Ye know the English government are very much frightened of me father.

They are indade. They put him in prison once--before I was born. They were so afraid of him they put him in prison. I wish ye could see him!"

she said regretfully.

"I am sure I wish I could--with all my heart. You have really aroused my keenest interest," said Jerry gravely. "He must be a very remarkable man," he added.

"That's what he is," agreed Peg warmly. "An' a very wondherful lookin'

man, too. He's a big, upstandin' man, with gold hair goin' grey, an' a flashin' eye an' a great magnetic voice. Everybody sez 't's the MAGNETISM in him that makes him so dangerous. An' he's as bold as a lion. He isn't frightened of anybody. He'll say anything right to your face. Oh, I wish ye could just meet him. He's not afraid to make any kind of a speech--whether it's right or not, so long as it's for the 'Cause.' Do yez like hearin' about me father?" she asked Jerry suddenly, in case she was tiring him--although how any one COULD be tired listening to the description of her Hero she could not imagine.

Jerry hastened to a.s.sure her that he was really most interested.

"I am not botherin' ye listenin', am I?"

"Not in the least," Jerry a.s.sured her again.

"Well, so long as yer not tired I'll tell ye some more. Ye know I went all through Ireland when I was a child with me father in a cart. An'

the police and the constabulary used to follow us about. They were very frightened of me father, they were. They were grand days for me. Ye know he used to thry his speeches on me first. Then I'd listen to him make them in public. I used to learn them when I'd heard them often enough. I know about fifty. I'll tell ye some of them if I ever see ye again. Would ye like to hear some of them?"

"Very much indeed," answered Jerry.

"Well, if I STAY here ye must come some time an' I'll tell ye them. But it is not the same hearin' me that it is hearin' me father. Ye've got to see the flash of his eye hear the big sob in his voice, when he spakes of his counthry, to ralely get the full power o' them. I'll do me best for ye, of course."

"Ye're English, mebbe?" she asked him suddenly.

"I am," said Jerry. He almost felt inclined to apologise.

"Well, sure that's not your fault. Ye couldn't help it. No one should hold that against ye. We can't all be born Irish."

"I'm glad you look at it so broad-mindedly," said Jerry.

"Do ye know much about Ireland?" asked Peg.

"Very little, I'm ashamed to say," answered Jerry. "Well, it would be worth yer while to learn somethin' about it," said Peg.

"I'll make it my business to," he a.s.sured her. "It's G.o.d country, is Ireland. And it's many a tear He must have shed at the way England mismanages it. But He is very lenient and patient with the English.

They're so slow to take notice of how things really are. And some day He will punish them and it will be through the Irish that punishment will be meted out to them." She had unconsciously dropped again into her father's method of oratory, climaxing the speech with all the vigour of the rising inflection. She looked at Jerry, her face aglow with enthusiasm.

"That's from another of me father's speeches. Did ye notice the way he ended it?--'through the Irish that punishment will be meted out to them!' I think 'meted out' is grand. I tell you me father has the most wondherful command of language."

She stood restlessly a moment, her hands beating each other alternately.

"I get so lonesome for him," she said.

Suddenly with a tone of definite resolve in her voice she started up the stairs, calling over her shoulder:

"I'm goin' back to him now. Good-bye!" and she ran all the way upstairs.

Jerry followed her--pleading insistently:

"Wait! Please wait!" She stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down at him.

"Give us one month's trial--one month!" he urged. "It will be very little, out of your life and I promise you your father will not suffer through it except in losing you for that one little month. Will you?

Just a month?"

He spoke so earnestly and seemed so sincerely pained and so really concerned at-her going, that she came down a few steps and looked at him irresolutely:

"Why do you want me to stay?" she asked him.

"Because--because your late uncle was my friend. It was his last wish to do something for you. Will you? Just a month?"

She struggled, with the desire to go away from all that was so foreign and distasteful to her. Then she looked at Jerry and realised, with something akin to a feeling of pleasure, that he was pleading with her to stay, and doing it in such a way as to suggest that it mattered to him. She had to admit to herself that she rather liked the look of him.

He seemed honest, and even though he were English he did show an interest whenever she spoke of her father and he had promised to try and learn something about Ireland. That certainly was in his favour--just as the fact that he could laugh was, too. Quickly the thoughts ran hot-foot through Peg's brain: After all to run away now would look cowardly. Her father would be ashamed of her. This stuck-up family would laugh at her. That thought was too much. The very suggestion of Alaric laughing at her caused a sudden rush of blood to her head. Her temples throbbed. Instantly she made up her mind.

She would stay. Turning to Jerry, she said: "All right, then. I'll stay--a month. But not any more than a month, though!"

"Not unless you wish it."

"I won't wish it--I promise ye that. One month'll be enough in this house. It's goin' to seem like a life-time."

"I'm glad," said Jerry, smiling.