And then he asked himself the question, What had been the meaning of the morning’s outrage upon poor Peggy?
It was a difficult one to answer, and somehow it brought back to him incidents in his past life that he would just as soon have forgotten.
Fitzroy had married for love, or something which appeared to have been cousin-german to that tender passion. He had not married a sweet-faced doll with wooden legs, such as you can pick up for twopence in a toy-shop, but a more expensive and equally useless commodity, namely, a young girl actress of second-class parts, to whom his flute had given him an introduction. Their married life had not been all lavender, for he was shiftless, and she was thriftless. But she died when Johnnie was but a mere child, and, after this, Fitzroy began to feel around him for some work that would not only be a prop and a stay to him, but enable him to forget his sorrow. So, somehow or other, he became gradually possessed of this same show. Then, when Johnnie was only seven years of age, little Peggy came upon the scene—a child of five summers, but wise beyond conception.
Fitzroy was himself a gentleman at heart, although poverty had led him a little way apart from the path of rectitude. I don’t imagine for a single moment that because Fitzroy was one of a troupe of Wandering Minstrels, and was sometimes classed with the gipsies, that he ever robbed a hen-roost, or cleared a clothes-line, or even requisitioned turnips or potatoes from farmers’ fields. But he had for the sake of making money been something of a betting man, and the way that poor little Peggy had come into his possession was not so creditable to his sense of honour as it might have been. He never cared to think about this. But he had come to love the child quite as much as though she were his own daughter—perhaps, considering all he knew of the story of her life, a little more, because pity for Peggy was in some measure mingled with that love.
Peggy was his Peggy now, and no one should ever come between the child and him. He felt at that moment that he could strike down the man who dared—lay him dead at his feet. He was in reality too shrewd a person to do any such thing. Striking people down in this fashion is a game that does not pay. But the thought had excited him, and he was fain to appeal once more to his flute, and that never failed to soothe him. What did these two men who had accosted Peggy want or desire, anyhow? Were they the same who seven long years ago had first—but there! he must dismiss the thought.
“Avaunt!” he cried, starting up and walking away from it, as it were, out and away into the cool summer air, as if he could leave that thought, leave his care on the sofa behind him.
“No, no,” he told himself; “some idiots tried to scare the girl, that is all; some itinerant fern-gatherers wanted to have a bit of fun to themselves. That is all. Nothing more.”
He played that sweet, tender, Irish air, “The Meeting of the Waters,” then picked up his rod, and went off to fish.
There was a little heaviness at his heart all day, nevertheless, which neither sport nor anything else could altogether dislodge.
But Peggy had quite forgotten her adventure, even before the rehearsal was over.