Frank O'Connell stood on the quay that morning in July, and watched the great ship slowly swing in through the heads, and his heart beat fast as he waited impatiently while they moored her.
His little one had come back to him.
His fears were at rest.
She was on board that floating mass of steel and iron, and the giant queen of the water had gallantly survived storm and wave and was nestling alongside the pier.
Would she be the same Peg? That was the thought beating through him as he strained his eyes to see the familiar and beloved little figure. Was she coming back to him—transformed by the magic wand of association—a great lady? He could scarcely believe that she WOULD, yet he had a half-defined fear in his soul that she might not be the same.
One thing he made up his mind to—never again would he think of separation. Never again would he argue her into agreeing to go away from him. He had learned his lesson and by bitter experience. Never again until SHE wished it.
Amid the throngs swarming down the gangways he suddenly saw his daughter, and he gave a little gasp of surprised pleasure, and a mist swam before his eyes and a great lump came into his throat and his heart beat as a trip-hammer. It was the same Peg that had gone away a month ago. The same little black suit and the hat with the berries and the same bag and "Michael" in her arms.
Their meeting was extraordinary. It was quite unlike what either had supposed it would be. There was a note of strangeness in each. There was—added to the fulness of the heart—an aloofness—a feeling that, in the passage of time, life had not left either quite the same.
How often that happens to two people who have shared the intimacy of years and the affection of a lifetime! After a separation of even a little while, the break in their joint-lives, the influence of strangers, and the quick rush of circumstance during their parting, creates a feeling neither had ever known. The interregnum had created barriers that had to be broken down before the old relationship could be resumed.
O'Connell and Peg made the journey home almost in silence. They sat hand in hand in the conveyance whilst Peg's eyes looked at the tall buildings as they flashed past her, and saw the daring advertisements on the boardings and listened to the ceaseless roar of the traffic.
All was just as she had left it.
Only Peg had changed.
New York seemed a Babel after the quiet of that little north of England home. She shivered as thoughts surged in a jumbled mass through her brain.
They reached O'Connell's apartment.
It had been made brilliant for Peg's return.
There were additions to the meagre furnishings Peg had left behind. Fresh pictures were on the walls. There were flowers everywhere.
O'Connell watched Peg anxiously as she looked around. How would she feel toward her home when she contrasted it with what she had just left?
His heart bounded as he saw Peg's face brighten as she ran from one object to another and commented on them.
"It's the grand furniture we have now, father!"
"Do ye like it, Peg?"
"That I do. And it's the beautiful picture of Edward Fitzgerald ye have on the wall there!"
"Ye mind how I used to rade ye his life?"
"I do indade. It's many's the tear I've shed over him and Robert Emmet."
"Then ye've not forgotten?"
"Forgotten what?"
"All ye learned as a child and we talked of since ye grew to a girl?"
"I have not. Did ye think I would?"
"No, Peg, I didn't. Still, I was wondherin'—"
"What would I be doin' forgettin' the things ye taught me?"
He looked at her and a whimsical note came in his voice and the old look twinkled in his eyes.
"It's English I thought ye'd be by now. Ye've lived so long among the Saxons."
"English! is it?" And her tone rang with disgust and her look was one of disdain. "English ye thought I'd be! Sure, ye ought to know me betther than that!"
"I do, Peg. I was just tasin' ye."
"An' what have ye been doin' all these long days without me?"
He raised the littered sheets of his manuscript and showed them to her.
"This."
She looked over her shoulder and read:
"From 'BUCK-SHOT' to 'AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION.' "THE HISTORY OF A GENERATION OF ENGLISH MISRULE, by Frank Owen O'Connell."
She looked up proudly at her father.
"It looks wondherful, father."
"I'll rade it to you in the long evenin's now we're together again."
"Do, father."
"And we won't separate any more, Peg, will we?"
"We wouldn't have this time but for you, father."
"Is it sorry ye are that ye went?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry o' coorse, and GLAD, too, in some ways."
"What made yez come back so sudden-like?"
"I only promised to stay a month."
"Didn't they want ye any longer?"
"In one way they did, an' in another they didn't. It's a long history—that's what it is. Let us sit down here as we used in the early days and I'll tell ye the whole o' the happenin's since I left ye."
She made him comfortable as had been her wont before, and, sitting on the little low stool at his feet, she told him the story of her month abroad and the impelling motive of her return.
She softened some things and omitted others—Ethel entirely. That episode should be locked forever in Peg's heart.
Jerry she touched on lightly.
O'Connell asked her many questions about him, remembering the tone of her later letters. And all the time he never took his eyes from her face, and he marked how it shone with a warm glow of pleasure when Jerry's name occurred, and how the gleam died away and settled into one of sadness when she spoke of her discovery that he had a title.
"They're queer people, the English, Peg."
"They are, father."
"They're cool an' cunnin' an' crafty, me darlin'."
"Some o' them are fine an' honourable an' clever too, father."
"Was this fellow that called himself 'Jerry'—an' all the while was a Lord—that same?"
"Ivery bit of it, father."
"And he trated ye dacent-like?"
"Sure, I might have been a LADY, the way he behaved to me."
"Did he iver smile at ye?"
"Many's the time."
"Do ye remember the proverb I taught ye as a child?"
"Which wun, father? I know a hundred, so I do."
"'Beware the head of a bull, the heels of a horse, of the smile of an Englishman!'"
He paused and looked at her keenly.
"Do you remember that, Peg?"
"I do. There are Englishmen AND Englishmen. There are PLENTY o' bad Irish, and by the same token there are SOME good Englishmen. An' he is wun o' them."
"Why didn't he tell ye he was a Lord?"
"He didn't think it necessary. Over there they let ye gather from their manner what they are. They don't think it necessary to be tellin' everyone."
"It's the strange ones they are, Peg, to be rulin' us."
"Some day, father, they'll go over to Ireland and learn what we're really like, and then they'll change everything. Jerry said that."
"They've begun to already. Sure, there's a man named Plunkett has done more in a few years than all the governments have accomplished in all the years they've been blunderin' along tryin' to thrample on us. An' sure, Plunkett has a title, too!"
"I know, father. Jerry knows him and often spoke of him."
"Did he, now?"
"He did. He said that so long as the English government 'ud listen to kindly, honourable men like Plunkett, there was hope of makin' Ireland a happy, contented people, an' Jerry said—"
"It seems Misther Jerry must have said a good deal to yez."
"Oh, he did. Sure, it was HE started me learnin' things, an' I am goin' on learnin' now, father. Let us both learn."
"What?" cried the astonished father.
"O' coorse, I know ye have a lot o' knowledge, but it's the little FINE things we Irish have got to learn. An' they make life seem so much bigger an' grander by bein' considerate an' civil an' soft-spoken to each other. We've let the brutality of all the years that have gone before eat into us, and we have thrown off all the charm and formality of life, and in their place adopted a rough and crude manner to each other that does not come really from our hearts, but from the memory of our wrongs."
Unconsciously Peg had spoken as she had heard Jerry so often speak when he discussed the Irish. She had lowered her voice and concluded with quiet strength and dignity. The contrast to the beginning of the speech was electrical. O'Connell listened amazed.
"Did the same Jerry say that?"
"He did, father. An' much more. He knows Ireland well, an' loves it. Many of his best friends are Irish—an'—"
"Wait a minnit. Have I ever been 'rough an' crude' in me manner to you, Peg?"
"Never, father. But, faith, YOU ought to be a Lord yerself. There isn't one o' them in England looks any betther than you do. It's in their MANNER that they have the advantage of us."
"And where would I be gettin' the manner of a Lord, when me father died the poorest peasant in the village, an' me brought up from hand to mouth since I was a child?"
"I'm sorry I said anythin', father. I wasn't reproachin' ye."
"I know that, Peg."
"I'm so proud of ye that yer manner manes more to me than any man o' title in England."
He drew her gently to him.
"There's the one great danger of two people who have grown near to each other separatin'. When they, meet again, they each think the other has changed. They look at each other with different eyes, Peg. An' that's what yer doin' with me. So long as I was near ye, ye didn't notice the roughness o' me speech an' the lack o' breedin' an' the want o' knowledge. Ye've seen and listened to others since who have all I never had the chance to get. God knows I want YOU to have all the advantages that the wurrld can give ye, since you an' me counthry—an' the memory of yer mother—are all I have had in me life these twenty years past. An' that was why I urged ye to go to England on the bounty of yer uncle. I wanted ye to know there was another kind of a life, where the days flowed along without a care or a sorrow. Where poverty was but a word, an' misery had no place. An' ye've seen it, Peg. An' the whole wurrld has changed for ye, Peg. An' from now you'll sit in judgment on the dead and gone days of yer youth—an' in judgment on me—"
She interrupted him violently:
"What are ye sayin' to me at all! I sit in judgment on YOU! What do ye think I've become? Let me tell ye I've come back to ye a thousand times more yer child than I was when I left ye. What I've gone through has only strengthened me love for ye and me reverence for yer life's work. I MAY have changed. But don't we all change day by day, even as we pass them close to each other. An' if the change is for the betther, where's the harm? I HAVE changed, father. There's somethin' wakened in me I never knew before. It's a WOMAN I've brought ye back instead o' the GIRL I left. An' it's the WOMAN'LL stand by ye, father, even as the child did when I depended on ye for every little thing. There's no power in the wurrld'll ever separate us!"
She clung to him hysterically.
Even while she protested the most, he felt the strange new note in her life. He held her firmly and looked into her eyes.
"There's one thing, Peg, that must part us, some day, when it comes to you."
"What's that, father?"
"LOVE, Peg."
She lowered her eyes and said nothing.
"Has it come? Has it, Peg?"
She buried her face on his breast, and though no sound came, he knew by the trembling of her little body that she was crying.
So it HAD come into her life.
The child he had sent away a month ago had come back to him transformed in that little time—into a woman.
The Cry of Youth and the Call of Life had reached her heart.
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