A Passionate Girl Read Online Free

world as it really is.”
    â€œâ€™Tis the poets who help us see the glory and the tragedy of life. See courage, faith, beauty, all the things money can’t buy.”
    â€œJesus God, Bess, will you stop seeing me as a man of money? Do I have the queen’s head stamped on my face like a sovereign? I’m a man, Bess, a creature of flesh and blood, and I love you.”
    â€œYou want to buy me,” I said.
    The word “love” aroused a blind anger and fear in me. I see now it was not fear of his love but of my idea of it as a prison that would turn me into a meek forgiver, like Mother.
    â€œI would buy you if I could,” he said. “I’d buy you to stop the thing that is destroying my sleep and my waking. But I know you can’t be bought. It’s what I love most about you, Bess.”
    A great dark thundercloud was moving down the lake from the direction of Limerick. I chose to look at it rather than at him. I would not let him buy me, either with his pleas or his money. I told myself the cloud was an omen; it carried within it the hosts of the air, the armies of the old kings and heroes. “Take me home,” I said. “Can’t you see it’s going to thunder and rain?”
    In front of our house, I sprang from the jaunting cart without a word of good-bye to him. I watched him drooping at the cart’s head until he disappeared around the bend in the road caused by the cairn. This burial mound of the old kings had stood beside the road, covered with bright quartz stones, untouched for two thousand years for fear of the curse the ancient dead could lay on you. The conjunction of Patrick Dolan, the sad collaborator of defeated Ireland, and this silent symbol of our glorious past stirred wild thoughts in my head and wilder feelings in my heart.
    A moment later I noticed how the sun was dwindling as the thundercloud mounted over lake and farmland like the frowning forehead of an angry god. Suddenly I knew what I wanted, what I must have, a love as wild and reckless as the one in the song that every Irish girl sang in her secret heart, while her mother frowned on her. “Donal Ogue,” which is Irish for “Young Dan,” was its title. I began to whisper it as the first drops splattered on the grass around me.
    â€œDonal Ogue, when you cross the water
    Take me with you to be your partner.
    And at fair and market you’ll be well looked after
    And you can sleep with the Greek king’s daughter.”
    Behind me came squeals of fright from the maids and the slamming of windows. They were rushing around in a terror, certain that one of the old gods was riding the thundergust. Let him, I prayed, let him, and went on with the song, with the words of the long-dead girl to her warrior lover, whom she knew to be faithless but whom she loved nonetheless.
    â€œYou said you’d give me—’tis you talk lightly
    Fish skin gloves that would fit me tightly
    Bird skin shoes when I went out walking
    And a silken dress would set Ireland talking.”
    â€œMiss Bessie,” bawled Bridget, the fat maid, “For the love of God come in. Lord Desmond himself could be in that wind, ready to seize your very soul.”
    I ignored her, letting huge drops of rain dash against my upturned face. “I’m not afraid of Lord Desmond,” I shouted. I clung to the white pickets of the gate and chanted:
    â€œTo lonely well I wander sighing.
    â€™Tis there I do my fill of crying
    When I see the world but not my charmer
    And all his locks the shade of amber.”
    A hand seized my arm. My sister Mary pulled me off the gate. “Good God, Bessie,” she said. “Can’t you let poetry alone for a bit? Hasn’t Mother enough to worry about this day without you catching pneumonia?”
    I whirled on her. “Let poetry alone? That’s just like you, Mary, you keep poetry in a cage like your old bullfinch and let it hop out now and