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 title 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."