Peg O' My Heart Part 84

Under her breath she murmured:

"Good-bye, Misther Jerry--an' G.o.d bless ye--an' thank ye for bein' so nice to me." And she pa.s.sed out.

In the hall Peg found Ethel and Hawkes waiting for her.

They put her between them in the cab and with "Michael" in her arms, she drove through the gates of Regal Villa never to return.

The gathering storm broke as she reached the station. In storm Jerry came into her life, in storm she was leaving his.

The threads of what might have been a fitting addition to the "LOVE STORIES OF THE WORLD" were broken.

Could the break ever be healed?

CHAPTER XVIII

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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.sociates hailed him familiarly as "Ted!" a grieved look would cross his semi-Scotch features, and he would hasten to correct in his broad, coa.r.s.e 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 t.i.tle.

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 pa.s.s--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 impa.s.sable 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 att.i.tude 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-a.n.a.lysis 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 a.s.serting 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 pa.s.sed 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-sn.o.bdom 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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.